I HAVE been reflecting on how much Halloween has changed since my childhood in Denton Holme in the 1970s.
The biggest difference is that Halloween wasn’t really a thing then. Although All Hallows Eve has long-standing roots in British folklore and traditions, it just wasn’t marked in the same way it is today.
Now our shops brim with ghoulish decorations, orange and black tinsel and costumes for all ages.
Don’t get me wrong, I like Halloween. When my daughter was little, we loved decorating the house. One year we did such a good job with police tape and the chalked outline of a body on the front that the neighbours genuinely thought there had been an incident.
The Halloween of my childhood was a mixture of apples, in toffee or a bucket of water, and turnips. Yes, turnips. We didn’t have the easy flesh of pumpkins in the 1970s. We used to hollow out a turnip, a nod to the older Celtic traditions of Samhain, and fashion a lantern face from three poorly chiselled triangles.
When I was a child, Halloween stood in the shadow of Bonfire Night on November 5. As any school child will happily recount, Bonfire Night commemorates the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605 when Guy Fawkes and his fellow conspirators tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament to assassinate King James I and restore a Catholic monarch to the throne.
Rather than trick or treating, 1970s children would make a ‘Guy’ and haul it around the streets in an old pram asking for “a penny for the Guy” in the lead-up to the 5th.
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Overall, 1970s Halloween and Bonfire Night were quieter, simpler celebrations. But does that mean being a child in the 1970s was better? Today’s children have healthier lives, they stay in education longer and have greater learning opportunities, more rights, and stronger safeguarding laws and child protection.
But on the other hand, back in the 70s we played outdoors, not on our screens, life was less digitised, and social interactions were mostly face to face.
I was reminded of this at a recent Parliamentary event organised by ‘Phone Free Education’. ‘Phone Free Education’ was founded by the mother of Brianna Ghey who was murdered by two other children exposed to extreme online content.
After visiting many local schools that now ban phones during the day I’m convinced that our schools should be safe places for children on and offline. We might not want or be able to return to the simplicity of a 1970s childhood, but we need to do more to give children the chance to play and connect without a screen.
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