The Joys of Halloween

Times have changed. When I was a young lad, all those many years ago, come the 31st of October each year, pumpkins were purchased, spoons were bent carving them out, ghost costumes were made from old bed sheets (not purchased on Amazon) and your parents made sure they had a bag of sugary treats for the arrival of ‘trick or treaters’ from the neighbourhood.

But most importantly, above all else, you started learning jokes. Or poems. Or some kind of short skit.

Something like this. “Knock knock. Who’s there? Cows go. Cows go who? No, cows go moo!” Hilarious, eh? If that doesn’t have you rolling in the aisles, frankly nothing will. Whilst you won’t be securing a sell-out Edinburgh Fringe Festival slot with this kind of joke, it is, however, good, harmless, innocent kid joke fun. And in the ‘olden days’, you needed these jokes for when you set out round the neighbours in your homemade ghost costume to knock on their doors. For to gain a treat, you had to perform. A joke, a poem, a short skit. That was the deal. No performance, no treat. No costume, no treat. Simple.

But times have changed. No longer do children turn up at your doorstep dressed head to toe in fantastical Halloween outfits, offering up a tame joke that you feel obliged to laugh at heartily despite the fact that it is about as funny as the lines delivered by Jim Davidson when he was still on the television.

Now children turn up at your door dressed in jeans and T-shirt with a mask that they have shoved on over their face and shout at you ‘trick or treat’. And I mean literally shout at you. They then stand and look at you. Expectantly. For now it appears acceptable to simply knock on a door and expect to receive something for nothing.

Trying not to appear like scrooges a month early, my wife and I once purchased a variety pack of Cadbury’s chocolate treats in eager anticipation (yes, that is a lie) of the arrival of ‘guisers’ as they are commonly known in Scotland during the course of one Halloween evening.

After a series of knocks at the door that felt like the attempts of a battering ram to bring down the drawbridge of our castle, we were confronted by a ‘gaggle’ of teenage guisers, adorned with face masks straight from the costume department of the film Scream. “Trick or treat” they yelled in our faces.

I waited for their joke.

Expectantly. Nothing. I waited longer. They stared at me. A short while longer, they yelled ‘trick or treat’ as loud as possible (as they perhaps thought I was deaf and had simply misheard them). “Do you have a joke?” I politely asked. They stared at me. I realised it was futile. I handed them some chocolate. “What’s this?” they asked, perplexed. “A flake” I replied, equally bemused, for I had thought flakes were a common chocolate of choice for many. “Possibly the crumbliest, flakiest milk chocolate in the world.”

I added for good measure. Expressionless masks glared back. “Do you not have money?” they asked. My heart sank. “It’s chocolate or nothing” I replied.

Bring back the olden days. That knock knock joke is growing on me. •

Michael Atkinson is a dad to two young sons, but occasionally finds the time to write on golf, whisky, fatherhood and politics.