Over the coming week there are two major celebrations, but why has Halloween become so much more popular than Guy Fawkes Night in the UK?
In view of current concerns over the preservation of our nation’s official faith, it seems odd that more is not made of Guy Fawkes Night, as an affirmation of our collective identity. Even in multi-faith, or faithless Britain, the occasion seems as good an excuse as any to enjoy pyrotechnics, conversation and refreshment with friends and neighbours (at a time of year when we’d probably rather be at home in the warm).
Although the celebration of Halloween, as we’ve come to know it, is a US import, the associated paraphernalia comes mainly from China. Halloween has become a bonanza for the high street, for specialist fancy dress retailers and for clubs, bars and restaurants. Go to any supermarket and you’ll see shelves stacked with stickers, food, party packs, clothing and accessories. Meantime, fireworks are kept far away from children’s grubby mitts, locked up in the glass cabinets of quietly decaying corner shops.
Any fule kno that playing with fireworks is potentially more hazardous than cadging sweets from neighbours. However, Halloween is fraught with its own dangers, like accepting gifts from strangers. Fireworks displays have become occasions for the health and safety brigade to go bonkers. Rarely these days will you see a real fire: local authorities have even been known to show film footage of a bonfire to simulate the authentic crackle and glow. Meanwhile, middle class parents play their part in the commercial conspiracy that is Halloween, by chaperoning kids around local streets in search of goodies, which are collected in large carrier bags. Some parents then filter out all the ‘junk’ items (almost certainly 100% of the contents) and restrict their children to what is deemed to be healthy.
You’d think Jamie Oliver would be on the case, promoting Guy Fawkes food – which is dominated by the Great British banger. Sausages with mash, or baked potatoes, are popular fare, often with beans. Otherwise, a hearty winter warming soup or stew. But children (and those who advertise to them) prefer stickier treats. It’s a shame the beta-carotene rich pumpkin is just for show. Halloween offers only toffee apples… and marshmallows, along with every other type of ‘candy’ (think acid drops, toxic waste and gum powder).
Long gone are the days when children trawled the streets, with a homemade Guy in a craftily cobbled together trailer, asking for a ‘penny’ towards fireworks… Pointy hats and noses, Dracula capes and teeth are far more popular with children – though rarely made by hand. Any opportunity to dress up is an excuse to buy a look. Bat ears, blue lips, golf balls and a curious crow suit all feature amongst the best dressed celebrity Halloween costumes on the Telegraph’s fashion blog – and an Ashish sequin skeleton dress (at £1025) has the most ‘loves’. Fancy dress parties, enjoyed by people of all ages, are big business. Even the traditional Guy Fawkes mask has been given a V for Vendetta makeover.
Halloween, which has its origins in Celtic tradition (and the commemoration of the eve before All Hallows, or All Saints Day), is also a chance to celebrate all things horrid and evil. The practice of trick or treating can lead to pranks as dangerous as posting fireworks through letterboxes. I’ve heard of garden hedges being set alight, apples being thrown through windows, and have inadvertently been the victim of Halloween pranksters myself. Having spent the best part of the prior evening painstakingly carving out the guts of a pumpkin, I lit the candle inside and put it on display outside the door, as I popped out to buy sweets for the trick and treaters. On my return, I was mortified to find that my pumpkin had been kicked into a lightwell, and smashed to smithereens…
I hate every public holiday now they’ve all been turned into consuming festivals. Baa Humbug! Now I just need to work out who’s house we should go to this evening in order to avoid the local urchins on their charmless sweet gathering exercise
I shall have (dolly) mixed feelings next week, when the commercial bandwaggon that is Halloween turns the corner into our south London street. Last year the Trick or Treat phrase became less a question, more a threat; and the ‘boys and girls’ who used to turn up, with their mums hanging around behind them, had been replaced by mainly hooded young men, with a token child, painted up, an issue of their own loins I suspected. And we don’t need reminding around here that less than three months ago this lot had brought forward their own bonfire night of the vanities by torching the local Londis, just a furlong from where I am tapping this out.
…And the Occupy London protesters have adopted the V for Vendetta/Guy Fawkes guise.
dolly?
Yes indeed – at least the true English Dionysiac spirit (laced with good old-fashioned anti-Popery) lives on in Lewes, a bracingly dangerous place on Bonfire Night – and no Health and Safety in sight.
Prefer the summer solstice meself, what japes, driving the cows through a big bonfire, as they did in olden days, some blue woad and a glug of mead an added bonus.
All taking place on the right hand hill (we live halfway up the middle one, so not far to drove.)
Halloween (or dookie-apple night in Geordie) never the same after ET.
” but why has Halloween become so much more popular than Guy Fawkes Night in the UK?”
In three words “Harry bloody Potter” simples
Good for Lewes, Nige. Magnificent photograph, Malty. Reminds me of commuting back in the days when stubble was burned, and the train would become filled with smoke from the fields.
Talking of Harry Potter, Sean, I stumbled upon this curious article. Is this where Halloween is headed: “…the kind of Halloween party that has sprung up in recent years: Instead of going door to door, costumed kids congregate in a parking lot, where they gather goodies from every car.”
Worm, Mahlerman, where I used to live the mothers (mainly American) were far more scary than the children.
I don’t think you need to look much further than two things to explain this:
1) The V for Vendetta mask: Guy Fawkes is now the hero, not the villain. Guy’s place in the culture has shifted. Supermarket fireworks were always a bit weedy anyway, and big set-piece firework displays have become a year-round affair – Edinburgh’s big night marks the end of the Festival and takes place at the start of September. London’s is now on New Year’s Eve, although there’ll no doubt be something spectacular at Battersea Park next weekend.
2) For the last decade, all things supernatural/witches/wizards have been hugely popular with children. Blame J.K.Rowling, blame Philip Pullman, blame Anthony Horowitz etc., but Halloween is the big annual celebration of all of this, and the costumes celebrate recently famous characters.
I love Hallowe’en because the streets will be filled with people wearing amazing costumes, and that to me is colour and life in the darkening days. I love dressing up, half the population loves dressing up. A colleague was telling me of a lawyer friend who uses Hallowe’en as an excuse for dressing like a dominatrix (as Goth girls do all the year round, or at least in the evening). No-one believes in evil taking this particular form now, so it’s a game. People who put on a Satan outfit wouldn’t dress up like today’s figures of evil – paedophiles, Nazis, Osama Bin Laden or Columbine murderers – or if they did, they would be regarded as very sick puppies (like Prince Harry). It might be a good joke to dress up as a banker. . .
Guy Fawkes was definitely a bigger event than Halloween in my youth. I remember apple-bobbing but little else. But I can see why they would switch in popularity: Halloween provides infinite opportunities for fancy dress whereas fireworks are, these days, a bit meh, aren’t they?
James, I’ve suddenly realised why I moved to a top floor apartment – I can watch all the fabulous fireworks displays across London, without being disturbed by aspiring wizards. I do miss the Jumping Jacks, Roman Candles and Catherine Wheels, but the other year we sneakily launched some quite big rockets from the terrace (probably half scared the neighbours to death).
I love dressing up too, Rosie and wouldn’t deny anyone the right to wear whatever they please. I once visited the Erotica show… purely out of curiosity. A great place for people watching and marvelling at how tacky all the S&M rubber clothing is – they could do with some decent designers in that field. Daphne Guinness does the designer Goth look rather well. For a darkly different look, I’d go for something more like Goya’s Duchess of Alba – shrouded in lots of black lace. I’m not sure why people shouldn’t be allowed to dress up as Nazis or Bin Laden as a joke, sort of reinforcing the horror of these people. As for paedophiles, is there a uniform? You’ll get me started on children’s haircuts at school next…
So what would you wear, Brit?
I’d go dressed as Ed Balls.
Growing up in Ireland, oíche shamhna (Halloween) was the only gig going, I was unaware of Guy Fawkes until much later on. I remember going door to door dressed up and asking for “any nuts or apples” but hoping for sweets. A party piece was expected, e.g. a song, it was all very quaint. Some menace started to creep into the night in later years, fireworks in letterboxes etc. We knew “bangers” as small exploding fireworks, French ones the most sought after as they were the loudest. One particularly nasty prank was to leave a lit paper bag full of poo on a doorstep, the unlucky householder would come out and stamp it out with unfortunate results.
roryoc, we need Jonathon to unveil the truth about ‘bangers’ (lately attributed an entirely different meaning by one/Wan reality TV stylist).
Susan: Forgive the laziness, but this is a copy of what it says in my book:
banger n.1 1 [mid-17C–late 19C] a notable lie. 2 [early 19C] something large. 3 [mid-19C] something excellent.
banger n.2 [play on SE claw-hammer coat] [late 19C+] (Aus.) a morning coat.
banger n.3 1 [1910s+] (orig. Aus.) a sausage [? its propensity to explode if cooked without initial pricking of the skin]. 2 [1960s+] a dilapidated motorcar [the sound of an ill-tuned, ageing engine]. 3 [1990s+] (Irish) an audible breaking of wind. 4 [1990s+] in fig. use, anything or anyone worn out and run down. 5 [2000s] a cylinder; usu. in combs. four-banger, six banger.
In phrases: ■ bangers and red lead (n.) [naut. sl. red lead, tomato ketchup or tinned tomatoes] [1920s+] tinned sausages and tomato sauce.
banger n.4 [one ‘bangs it down’ on a counter or table] 1 [1930s–40s] (US) $1. 2 [1960s] small change.
banger n.6 [abbr. gangbanger n. (2)] [1990s+] (US black) a gang member.
bangers n. [i.e. they bang together] [1980s+] (Irish) the testicles.
As for Mr Wan’s term of choice, my instinct is to link it to the same imagery that underpins bangers: the testicles, although, depending on dimension, it may be a distant cousin of banger 1 (2): something large.
I think Guy Fawkes Night has declined as people don’t seem as willing or able to build bonfires nowadays – without the chance to burn the Guy, what’s the point of making him and wheeling him around? I remember them being lit on the street when I was a child in South Wales. More cars, more regulation, more alternative spectacles, more respectability, less general wildness about.
Halloween is more popular because the fancy dress element has become the main part of it. Kids just love dressing up to look scary. They look forward to it for weeks. The sweets help too, but then we had those around the bonfire (toffee apples, treacle toffee).
Guy Fawkes travelled to New Zealand and we used to keep it. I think it’s like Hogmanay – excellent as a local, low key, home-made event, a bit depressing when it’s turned into a big organised affair. I remember the fun of making a guy using my Dad’s old clothes, the wonderful bonfire of dead trees (we lived on a farm), all our cousins and neighbours turning up and the next day walking to the smouldering spot to try and find unexploded crackers so we could try and get them to work again, or open them up and mess around with the gun powder.
I made a Margaret Thatcher effigy once, complete with handbag. It was great fun constructing this figure and bundling it into the boot of the car. However, when we burned her, someone said “Burn the bitch” and then everyone fell silent – it was a bit creepy and weird. I had stuffed her with dead leaves and she burned really well. Margaret Thatcher fell from power about 11 days later, and I haven’t meddled with the black arts since.
For me personally, Halloween is far better than Guy Fawkes!!
Its great fun isn’t it! Halloween I mean, dressing up in scary costumes; playing “Trick or Treat” round your local neighbourhood. We all remember the times as children when we would either a) go out trick or treating, or b) be in the house when there would be a knock on the door, and stood the other side would be a Ghost, a zombie and uncle fester!
As a kid I used to love the carving of the traditional Pumpkin (Jack O’Lantern), never thinking about the potential fire hazards. Traditional Jack O’Lanterns are illuminated by the naked flame of a candle.
Always have a fire extinguisher nearby in case of emergencies, also before lighting the candle, please make sure that your smoke alarm is in working order.
Spambot comment of the month!
Does this virtual commenter win a virtual bottle of whisky?
Where’s my whisky?
Are you a half-human, half-spambot?
A spam-cyborg?
I am a cyborg assassin sent back in time from the year 2029 to 2011 to kill Sarah Connor….. 🙂
I believe Jamie is a real person. I have reciprocated with a comment on their blog:
http://www.fireextinguisherslondon.net/blog/fire-safety/halloween-stay-safe/#more-9
Arf!
I wonder if they’d sponsor something on The D. I fancy a new fire extinguisher, as I’m sure many of our contributors do.
😉
Oh that’s really sad about your carved pumpkin! Little Hooligans.
Luckily all the trick or treaters that paid me a visit last night were very well behaved. Has anyone ever opted for the ‘trick’ rather than give out a treat. I once did and they were stumped!