Halloween will be different but let’s have fun safely | Blaise Tapp

One of my earliest memories of Halloween was finding half-baked slices of home-made pumpkin pie strewn across our doorstep after a group of vampires and zombies took exception to my mother’s offer of a treat.
Blaise still wants to trick or treat with his children.Blaise still wants to trick or treat with his children.
Blaise still wants to trick or treat with his children.

Back in the 1980s, Halloween was a world apart from what it is today. For a start, back then, the average trick or treater was aged about 15 and was more likely to nick your garden gnome than they were to take more edible flying saucers than they were entitled to.

Thirty-odd years ago, October 31 was nowhere near as commercial as it is today, not to mention having ever so slightly dark and sinister undertones, which is why I wasn’t really a fan back then. I wasn’t ever good at apple bobbing – when it was still socially acceptable to do such a thing – I made a rubbish Frankenstein and horror movies have never been my thing.

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When I was growing up, Halloween was an event that mainly long-haired, weird kids celebrated while everybody else stuffed their faces with toffee apples at organised bonfire displays.

These days, my view of the spookiest day of the year is somewhat different, with this change of heart being solely down to one thing – having kids. Halloween in the 21st-century is a truly family affair with the streets being filled with dutiful parents trailing around after their offspring as they relentlessly knock on as many doors as is humanly possible in a quest to fill skull-shaped buckets full of jelly snakes and packets of Haribo.

The rules are clear: if a house displays a pumpkin, not to mention a rubber bat or a luminous skeleton then you can knock on the door – if they don’t then you keep on walking.

Where I live, people follow these simple rules meaning there is a carnival-like atmosphere on the streets during the last night of this month.

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Near us, we are lucky enough to have families who really embrace the occasion and deck out their homes like they are Monster Mansion, with one even setting up a coffin, complete with dry-ice effects in among the bedding plants – it wouldn’t look out of place on Blackpool’s Golden Mile.

Yes, it is over-commercialised but Halloween is a great way to forget about the dark nights and the fact that November is, on the whole, pretty rubbish.

This year will be very different, however.

In Scotland, the government has told families to celebrate Halloween at home while the advice in the increasing number of English regions enduring Tier 3 restrictions is that ‘traditional trick or treating’ would mean that different households would have to mix, which of course isn’t allowed.

In such areas, householders have been told that even leaving sweets on the doorstep is ill-advised.

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As it stands, Boris Johnson’s government has stopped short of banning trick or treating, for fear of being labelled spoilsports no doubt, but has stated that the ‘rules are clear’, when millions of people would argue that they’re anything but.

It remains to be seen how busy Halloween will be in places that aren’t living under extra restrictions but my hunch is that it will be a non-event in most places, given that parents are advised to sanitise their little ones’ hands every time they ring a doorbell as well as ensuring they don’t inadvertently create groups of more than six on doorsteps.

Life is complicated enough without having to worry about fright night etiquette, meaning that most people probably won’t bother, which is a real pity as it will be yet another blow to our sense of community.

Halloween gives busy parents the chance to get out on the streets and chat with neighbours who they might not see that often.

This horrible nightmare that we continue to endure has robbed us of far more important things than being able to walk down the street dressed as Dracula but little treats are all-important right now.

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