I think you are mistaken about it being the whole UK. Hallowe’en is and was very much a Scottish tradition. This was the case in my own childhood and later in my daughter’s. We went guising dressed as anything we liked, not just witches and spooky things, and creative costumes were encouraged. It wasn’t trick or treat though. You knocked at neighbours’ doors and told a joke, said a poem or sang. You then got a wee treat, or if you were very lucky got invited in to play apple bobbing or something like that. We carried hollowed out turnips (swedes to you) with a candle inside. By my daughter’s era it was pumpkins 🎃 It was one night and that’s part of what made it special.
We didn’t do Bonfire Night. My father said someone failing to blow up the English parliament was not something to celebrate! Joking of course 🙃
My birthday is 22nd November and I feel quite lucky I get something in the month to look forward to before Christmas! It’s always been our benchmark of time for when we’re allowed to get christmassy in my household and while sometimes I get too excited and start listening to Christmas songs sooner, this year I find myself wanting to hold onto autumnal magic before advent begins. As for bonfire night my primary school used to hold one every year. We used to do a Guy competition where they’d be lined up in the hall and judged before being taken to the bonfire. Seems like such a weird tradition now!
Hallowe’en wasn’t a thing in inner city Birmingham in the 70s. Penny for the guy was different! We all made an effort for that. Toffee apples and parkin. Buying roast chestnuts of the vendor near the ramp up to New Street station. I can still smell them! Council fireworks display at Handsworth Park. Then Carol singing at the neighbours front doors. I could sing(still do) so we made a pleasing sound! My husband is from Blackburn and has many memories of walking up Pendle Hill, especially Easter Dawn.
Have you ever read any books by Stacey Halls?
Brilliant writer! I would recommend them all but her first book ‘The Familiars’ is about the Pendle witches and is particularly good. How about it for the November read?
When I was small all of the cousins would go to my grandmothers for Bonfire Night. It was a huge ritual. Big fire, baked potatoes, sausages, fried onions, and soup in cups. It was always freezing - steamy breath, cold feet in the ubiquitous wellington boots, knitted gloves and scarves. The women rarely came out of the kitchen, the men machoed it up lighting fireworks and shouting instructions. Us kids had the 'noise' ritual - a chorus of 'oooh! aaaah! eeeeh!' with each different firework. Happy days. As you say, Hallowe'en didn't exist in the way it does now. It's just a cynical money-making exercise.
Bonfire Night was definitely much more exciting and bigger than Hallowe’en was when I was a bairn - we usually went to the rugby club bonfire and fireworks display and then sometimes also had sparklers at home on the 5th. Cinder toffee and parkin and bonfire toffee (toffee apples never appealed) and jacket potatoes done in the edges of the bonfire. Magnificent.
I completely agree with you! Bonfire Night was a big deal when I was a child - we met up with friends of my parents in their garden, big bonfire, fireworks including sparklers - the start of winter. I think it was also, for my parents, a chance to have bright lights and celebration - this was only 10 years or so since the end of the war. I think you're right - organised firework displays are safer, particularly as the fireworks themselves seem to be much bigger and brighter; and they're wonderfully uplifting! Hallowe'en is, frankly, mainly an American commercial intruder. We can't fight it but we don't have to join in. Our local big estate still has a massive bonfire (built over weeks) for their staff and locals for Bonfire Night.
It's fabulous that you still have a local community based event for Bonfire Night. We have a town one which is great but gets v busy. Luckily we have a chap in our village who is a qualified pyrotechnician (what an awesome job btw) who does a free show for charity, just for us in the village. So much safe than those precarious rockets in milk bottles.
I don’t remember having fireworks as a child, my father had a very puritan attitude to things like that so they were classified as a waste of money. But when we moved to a small town in Hampshire when our daughters were young we used to go to the town’s firework display. We’d start in the Market Square with our torches (some literally fire torches, but mostly battery operated regular ones!) and walk through the town to the recreation ground and the main event.
It was so lovely! You could buy toffee apples and other sweet treats and oooh and aaah at the display which was always wonderful. Seeing our girls’ faces looking up into the sky in amazement is a lasting memory.
My ma hates halloween with abandon and I don't like the commercialised tat (not to mention the lethal plastic dresses made for little ones). But I am partial to celebrating it - I think us millenials see it as a bit of joy in the gloom of October.
I do have very fond memories of bonfire night though: my dad built a bonfire for me and my friends at girl guides and we had toffee apples and the like; this was the late 90s here in Suffolk.
Being an Aussie of British descent, I feel like this post mirrors my own experience. I loved bonfire night, until it ended in the late 80s. Too many drunken yobbos blowing themselves up with fireworks! It's also tricky to set bonfire night in November, as we come into summer and peak bushfire season (heck, we've been in official bushfire season requiring permits since August!). Logically, it makes sense why we don't do it any more, but gosh I miss it. I also feel conflicted about the rise of Halloween, and the way it has taken over the entire month, especially the overly-commercial, americanised version we get here.
That's such a great perspective, thank you. And I'm totally with you on the over commercialisation thing too. It seems like the one holiday (that isn't even a holiday) that requires the purchase of the most disposable tat.
My family came to Canada before I was born, so I got to grow up with the north american Halloween and accompanying spooky season, as well as witness the slow uptake back in England through the rest of my family (in Lancashire and Manchester), like getting to see the child-like joy of a 50 year old man carving his very first pumpkin.
I hope you can at least appreciate the irony of your lament that Halloween should only be on the 31st immediately being followed by your reminiscing about the "weeks in advance" excitement of bonfire night ;) Here those same exciting weeks are spent thinking over what to carve into our pumpkins, planning and making costumes (some years you gotta start in August if you've got big plans, which usually starts with scouring the second hand shops), trying (and failing) to avoid buying too much candy to hand out, watching the weather turn and the spiders move in, making mulled ciders, etc. Your dads gathered wood, mine gathered dry ice!
When I was small, all the neighbourhood parents pooled their funds for an epic fireworks display in the middle of our street in sand-filled garbage bins. Halloween fireworks are a very specifically Canadian-west-coast tradition, which came about due to our unique combination of heavily British and Chinese immigration, so technically I think can call that my favourite memory of bonfire night, as morphed as it is :D
I guess I was making the point that when I was a child, Halloween referred to one day (and still does) whereas Bonfire Night was the main, much anticipated event. Now the positions are reversed as we seem to have adopted more North American traditions.
When I was young my parents didn't let us do Halloween at all. Instead we did a hay wagon ride, a large bonfire with hot cocoa and hotdogs. I really miss the hot cocoa as it was homemade by our neighbors that put in the whole event. They used fresh milk as they were dairy farmers. Many people would join in on the event and the bonfire was blazing hot. In the wagon before we got to the fire sometimes your could see the northern lights dancing and the bright stars. I miss looking up into the sky and just seeing the stars shining brightly. Where I live now you can't see them as well
Lots of people say there was no such thing as Halloween back then so I must have got lucky. It was quite a thing in Devon. We didn't have any paraphernalia but my dad used to carve swedes and make lanterns and I was always a witch dressed in a bin bag and a home made pointy hat. I think I was in a Halloween vacuum. 🎃
I think you are mistaken about it being the whole UK. Hallowe’en is and was very much a Scottish tradition. This was the case in my own childhood and later in my daughter’s. We went guising dressed as anything we liked, not just witches and spooky things, and creative costumes were encouraged. It wasn’t trick or treat though. You knocked at neighbours’ doors and told a joke, said a poem or sang. You then got a wee treat, or if you were very lucky got invited in to play apple bobbing or something like that. We carried hollowed out turnips (swedes to you) with a candle inside. By my daughter’s era it was pumpkins 🎃 It was one night and that’s part of what made it special.
We didn’t do Bonfire Night. My father said someone failing to blow up the English parliament was not something to celebrate! Joking of course 🙃
Ah, very good point. Thank you
Very fair comment - and as a Welshwoman, I feel I would have got on with your father...
My birthday is 22nd November and I feel quite lucky I get something in the month to look forward to before Christmas! It’s always been our benchmark of time for when we’re allowed to get christmassy in my household and while sometimes I get too excited and start listening to Christmas songs sooner, this year I find myself wanting to hold onto autumnal magic before advent begins. As for bonfire night my primary school used to hold one every year. We used to do a Guy competition where they’d be lined up in the hall and judged before being taken to the bonfire. Seems like such a weird tradition now!
Hallowe’en wasn’t a thing in inner city Birmingham in the 70s. Penny for the guy was different! We all made an effort for that. Toffee apples and parkin. Buying roast chestnuts of the vendor near the ramp up to New Street station. I can still smell them! Council fireworks display at Handsworth Park. Then Carol singing at the neighbours front doors. I could sing(still do) so we made a pleasing sound! My husband is from Blackburn and has many memories of walking up Pendle Hill, especially Easter Dawn.
Have you ever read any books by Stacey Halls?
Brilliant writer! I would recommend them all but her first book ‘The Familiars’ is about the Pendle witches and is particularly good. How about it for the November read?
Oh yes, she's a brilliant author. And double yes, that would make an amazing book for November
Here’s hoping!
When I was small all of the cousins would go to my grandmothers for Bonfire Night. It was a huge ritual. Big fire, baked potatoes, sausages, fried onions, and soup in cups. It was always freezing - steamy breath, cold feet in the ubiquitous wellington boots, knitted gloves and scarves. The women rarely came out of the kitchen, the men machoed it up lighting fireworks and shouting instructions. Us kids had the 'noise' ritual - a chorus of 'oooh! aaaah! eeeeh!' with each different firework. Happy days. As you say, Hallowe'en didn't exist in the way it does now. It's just a cynical money-making exercise.
Bonfire Night was definitely much more exciting and bigger than Hallowe’en was when I was a bairn - we usually went to the rugby club bonfire and fireworks display and then sometimes also had sparklers at home on the 5th. Cinder toffee and parkin and bonfire toffee (toffee apples never appealed) and jacket potatoes done in the edges of the bonfire. Magnificent.
I completely agree with you! Bonfire Night was a big deal when I was a child - we met up with friends of my parents in their garden, big bonfire, fireworks including sparklers - the start of winter. I think it was also, for my parents, a chance to have bright lights and celebration - this was only 10 years or so since the end of the war. I think you're right - organised firework displays are safer, particularly as the fireworks themselves seem to be much bigger and brighter; and they're wonderfully uplifting! Hallowe'en is, frankly, mainly an American commercial intruder. We can't fight it but we don't have to join in. Our local big estate still has a massive bonfire (built over weeks) for their staff and locals for Bonfire Night.
It's fabulous that you still have a local community based event for Bonfire Night. We have a town one which is great but gets v busy. Luckily we have a chap in our village who is a qualified pyrotechnician (what an awesome job btw) who does a free show for charity, just for us in the village. So much safe than those precarious rockets in milk bottles.
I don’t remember having fireworks as a child, my father had a very puritan attitude to things like that so they were classified as a waste of money. But when we moved to a small town in Hampshire when our daughters were young we used to go to the town’s firework display. We’d start in the Market Square with our torches (some literally fire torches, but mostly battery operated regular ones!) and walk through the town to the recreation ground and the main event.
It was so lovely! You could buy toffee apples and other sweet treats and oooh and aaah at the display which was always wonderful. Seeing our girls’ faces looking up into the sky in amazement is a lasting memory.
Ooh, toffee apples - I'd forgotten about those. They must have kept dentists in business for months.
I’m sure they would! But so tasty!
I definitely remember Bonfire Night as a bigger deal than Halloween!
My ma hates halloween with abandon and I don't like the commercialised tat (not to mention the lethal plastic dresses made for little ones). But I am partial to celebrating it - I think us millenials see it as a bit of joy in the gloom of October.
I do have very fond memories of bonfire night though: my dad built a bonfire for me and my friends at girl guides and we had toffee apples and the like; this was the late 90s here in Suffolk.
Being an Aussie of British descent, I feel like this post mirrors my own experience. I loved bonfire night, until it ended in the late 80s. Too many drunken yobbos blowing themselves up with fireworks! It's also tricky to set bonfire night in November, as we come into summer and peak bushfire season (heck, we've been in official bushfire season requiring permits since August!). Logically, it makes sense why we don't do it any more, but gosh I miss it. I also feel conflicted about the rise of Halloween, and the way it has taken over the entire month, especially the overly-commercial, americanised version we get here.
That's such a great perspective, thank you. And I'm totally with you on the over commercialisation thing too. It seems like the one holiday (that isn't even a holiday) that requires the purchase of the most disposable tat.
My family came to Canada before I was born, so I got to grow up with the north american Halloween and accompanying spooky season, as well as witness the slow uptake back in England through the rest of my family (in Lancashire and Manchester), like getting to see the child-like joy of a 50 year old man carving his very first pumpkin.
I hope you can at least appreciate the irony of your lament that Halloween should only be on the 31st immediately being followed by your reminiscing about the "weeks in advance" excitement of bonfire night ;) Here those same exciting weeks are spent thinking over what to carve into our pumpkins, planning and making costumes (some years you gotta start in August if you've got big plans, which usually starts with scouring the second hand shops), trying (and failing) to avoid buying too much candy to hand out, watching the weather turn and the spiders move in, making mulled ciders, etc. Your dads gathered wood, mine gathered dry ice!
When I was small, all the neighbourhood parents pooled their funds for an epic fireworks display in the middle of our street in sand-filled garbage bins. Halloween fireworks are a very specifically Canadian-west-coast tradition, which came about due to our unique combination of heavily British and Chinese immigration, so technically I think can call that my favourite memory of bonfire night, as morphed as it is :D
I guess I was making the point that when I was a child, Halloween referred to one day (and still does) whereas Bonfire Night was the main, much anticipated event. Now the positions are reversed as we seem to have adopted more North American traditions.
Absolutely, it's been really strange to watch that happen from afar, and I can only imagine it's even stranger for you!
When I was young my parents didn't let us do Halloween at all. Instead we did a hay wagon ride, a large bonfire with hot cocoa and hotdogs. I really miss the hot cocoa as it was homemade by our neighbors that put in the whole event. They used fresh milk as they were dairy farmers. Many people would join in on the event and the bonfire was blazing hot. In the wagon before we got to the fire sometimes your could see the northern lights dancing and the bright stars. I miss looking up into the sky and just seeing the stars shining brightly. Where I live now you can't see them as well
Lots of people say there was no such thing as Halloween back then so I must have got lucky. It was quite a thing in Devon. We didn't have any paraphernalia but my dad used to carve swedes and make lanterns and I was always a witch dressed in a bin bag and a home made pointy hat. I think I was in a Halloween vacuum. 🎃