the brilliantly leaping gazelle

Today is Halloween!

I know! They kept that one quiet!

I was completely unaware of it. There were no adverts on TV advertising various tat to buy in the shops. Not for costumes, not for food, and not for other things people want more than they actually need. It was like how Britain used to be. Only joking. No-one wants a return to the Britain of old, back when women didn’t have penises, but the Labour Party did have socialist ideals and where the salt of the earth weren’t seen as the scum of the earth.

Because things are so much better now. They just are. And one of the things that helps make Britain better is us finally coming to terms with the fact that we are America. Not the proper one obviously. Not the one with Moms apple pie, cheerleaders and or Hollywood, but the South American one. Without the violence, temperature or exuberance, but still. Second best is a sort of best.

And proof of this is demonstrated by just how enthusiastically we’ve embraced Halloween. Although to be fair,  its more to do with us being encouraged to believe that this is true by retailers who’ve done what retailers do and have convinced consumers to consume. How much more American can one get? Identify and create a market and then sell to it. Its capitalism 101. Convince successive generations of UK parents that they’ll somehow be failing in their duty as to their children of they don’t buy them that costume, don’t decorate the front garden  and don’t host a lavish party. And we all know that children are the most important people in the world. Because soon they won’t be children, they’ll be having them. And their memories of childhood will inform the childhood they will want to give to their children. And repeat, repeat, repeat…

So whilst we pretend to care about the environment and pay lip service to the whole ‘keeping it the ground’ thing, the one thing that would really help the environment, would signal ones commitment to a more sustainable future far better than wearing a t-shirt or going on a march, would be to keep it ones pants. Sadly however, Halloween is proof that this isn’t happening.

One thing that has baffled me about Halloween over recent years is how it has escaped the opprobrium visited upon other forms of cultural appropriation. I know that it originated here and then the founding fathers took it with them on the Mayflower to America back in olden times. But their version of Halloween was all rooted in religion and superstition, of the dead rising from the grave, not of children dressing up and knocking on doors demanding sweets.

How is it not cultural appropriation of a specifically American tradition? Unless the children are dressed up as morris dancers, Beefeaters, or one of Henry VIII’s wives how are they not further compounding the appropriation. How is dressing up like a mummy not appropriating Egyptian culture? Or wearing a ‘Day of the Dead’ skeleton suit equally not as offensive to Mexicans. If they really wanted to dress up and go for something culturally relevant, they could go as Victorian guttersnipes or dolly-mops.

That’d put the trick into trick or treat.