All Hallows Eve

Tomorrow is Hallowe'en, and I have mixed feelings about it.

When I was a child, it just wasn't a Thing. We sang For All the Saints at church, and other than that it went unremarked.

By the time I'd grown up and got children of my own, England had adopted America's Trick or Treat tradition, with costumes and children going from house to house. At that time I was adamantly opposed to it, and wanted nothing whatever to do with anything celebrating and death and the demonic, ghosts and witchcraft.

Then at some point I saw a TV programme about Temple Grandin, an autistic woman made famous by Oliver Sacks chronicling in one of his books her work as a designer of abattoirs that reduced stress for animals to be slaughtered. The TV interview with her was done in the days approaching Hallowe'en. Temple Grandin had no children of her own, but she remark with joyful anticipation, "The children are coming!" — and that made me see Hallowe'en differently. She completely bypassed all the disturbing and sinister spiritual shadows, and went straight to a consideration of little children coming to her home in hope of being given sweets; which she looked forward to doing, with delight. This changed my outlook; I thought her approach felt healthy and sane, and adopted the same way of looking at it.

For a few years I carved pumpkin lanterns, some with a smiley face and some with a cross cut unto them. Some years I made up bags of sweets and included a little leaflet I'd written, saying to children to remember if ever they are afraid of any kind of darkness, that Jesus is the light of the world, and you only have to call out to him and he will help you.

More recently (I'm not over-keen on pumpkin) I moved on to just a couple of light-up artificial pumpkins in the window, and a few tubs of sweets to offer to children who called at our house.

But in the last two years my approach changed again. I came to the realisation that I find Hallowe'en immensely stressful. Sitting for several hours in readiness to answer knocks at the door — frequent but unscheduled and unpredictable — caused me such tension and anxiety that I found it exhausting (yes, I am on the autistic spectrum and flourish in predictable routine). The women we lived with before we moved shared the same sense of it being stressful, so the last couple of years we just turned out the lights at the front of the house and pretended to be out.

Four years of illness and pain have left me less resilient and more used to solitude. This summer, our house move has involved many days of tradesmen working here, each of these days requiring many hours of being on duty like a receptionist, ready to leap up and respond every time they stood at the door and shouted for attention. I found this so exhausting it left me flattened. It was like an extra illness of its own. And I realised the other day that on the back of this I am dreading Hallowe'en. 

Enquiring of neighbours, we have discovered that Hallowe'en is big in our neighbourhood — a lot of families with little kids live here. I have bought tubs of sweets (I think sweets are pretty much poison, but hey, I don't want to be a kill-joy), and acquired a light-up pumpkin to go in the window; but I'm conscious of having to steel myself to face a whole evening of random unpredictable callers knocking on the door and having to leap up and rush in response to open up and offer sweets, while my nervous system is progressively shredded.

I just don't want to.

I'll be glad when it's over.

But I don't object. No ghouls, no ghosts, no death's heads, just sweets and a smiley pumpkin and some window clings saying "Happy Hallowe'en". 

What John Martyn's song said — "I don't want to know about evil; I only want to know about love."