Next week is half term and having been involved in growing pumpkins at The Earth Trust for their event in half-term, I realised how big Halloween is in the UK these days. I guess there are around 3,000 pumpkins awaiting purchasers to carve and eat them. And that’s just the start for the Halloween phenomenon! There’s also a maize maze and butternut squashes to buy…
When I was last in the United States for Halloween, it was huge. Offices decorated with cobwebs, ghosts and ghouls. People dressed up as every character imaginable; including a ‘work-from-home’ example of an employee with shorts down below and a formal tie up top ready to take the next Zoom call! An image now very familiar to most people now 😂.
So why has All Hallows Eve become as popular as it now is, where Guy Fawkes night seems less attractive? Maybe it’s simply more fun!! We get to dress up, decorate to a scary level, and eat loads of sweets. What’s not to like! Of course fireworks are still cool to watch, but maybe the audience participation is the key to the success of Halloween. Halloween is also associated with bobbing for apples and silly games, again the fun element is top priority.
Our fascination with the spooky and unexplained could be a factor too. I heard a ghost whisperer talking about her mission to reveal a mysterious realm of haunting and mystical events. She films and records inexplicable sounds, smells, and sightings in old houses around the world. People who visit with her are so desperate for a sighting, they’ve been known to fake it! Who knows what the other side holds for us, but let’s hope there’s something beyond our death. The after life does feel like an attractive proposition, excluding hell and eternal damnation…
Hmm, who knows what beyond life involves. Fingers crossed there’s still a Halloween-tastic bucket of sweets at the end of the night. Have fun on this 31st October! Please do support the Earth Trust and their pumpkins…
Love Ruth x
Well Thought Through 