Hallowe’en is perfect festival for Covid era
At least guisinig is for one night only. The pandemic horror show will be with us for months to come, writes John Mclellan
There used to be a cartoon in the Viz adult comic called Yankee Dougal: he thinks he’s American, in which to the bemusement of his mother the main character would demand that everything be related to the USA. Waffles and molasses for breakfast, and that sort of thing.
And tonight’s the night for all Yankee Dougals up and down the country as the modern Hallowe’en is celebrated with a trans- Atlantic take unknown as recently as 30 years ago or so.
Forget guising in fancy dress, it’s trick- or- treating dressed as a Hammer horror film extra. No need for chisels or power tools to convert a woody turnip into a lantern when a spoon and a kitchen knife will do the job on a fleshy pumpkin. I struggle to work out why turning the front garden into a mock graveyard is anyone’s idea of a laugh, but it seems popular enough. Maybe I’m just getting old and this sort of thing edges a little closer to the bone with every passing year.
Going door- to- door on the scrounge around this time of year apparently traces back to the Celtic festival of Samhain in which spirits coming back into the living world at the start of winter had to be appeased. Like all good Pagan celebrations, Christians latched on to the opportunity and these days would face charges of cultural appropriation by turning it into the hallowed evening the night before All Saints’ Day, when offerings of food were meant to reassure the souls of the dead.
Now it’s all Walmart and Mars meets the Mexican Day of the Dead, as if dying somehow becomes less scary if you make light of it. Death, where is thy sting if it’s wrapped up in orange and black crepe paper and comes with a punchline? And as the gag doing the rounds on social media this week put it, “I’ve spent seven months wearing a mask and stuffing my face with chocolate, so do we really need a day dedicated to it?”
Perhaps Hallowe’en is the ideal celebration for the Covid era, when every news bulletin is dominated by mortality statistics, but I doubt very much if many youngsters will be going round the neighbourhood to demand Freddo bars for telling an old joke while dressed as a behorned, purple and green Coronavirus droplet.
Each to his own, and I’ve admittedly never been one for horror or the occult, but I can’t help but think that what is essentially a one- day death cult is not the most appropriate when we are once again being led to believe real mortal danger lurks in every corner. The end is nigh if you go to a sports ground or enter licensed premises, but at least you can still happily pop down to Asda to pick up a pumpkin.
The Hallowe’en horror fest is only for a night, but the Covid nightmare will be with us for months and the restrictions kicking in as of midnight tomorrow will not, as First Minister Nicola Sturgeon claimed on Thursday, “secure some degree of Christmas cheer” but guarantee a miserable and uncertain start to the year for thousands of people denied the means to earn a proper living. There will be plenty room at the inn for Mary and Joseph this December, but it’s the stable for them just the same because the inn has been told to close. The Three Wise Men won’t be able to deliver their gifts because they come from a different authority area, although the bloke from Yodel might still be able to drop off the gold, frankincense and myrrh.
As a measure of what to expect, the UK advertising industry predicts a ten per cent fall across the last three months of the year, dashing hopes of a strong recovery from its worstever quarter at the height of the first wave, when revenues crashed by a third. This week it was revealed that Marks & Spencer will not be advertising clothing this Christmas at all; never mind gold, the Magi won’t even be buying socks.
At least in the Spring there was a sense that everyone was in it together and that rigorous adherence to lockdown rules would hasten the end of the crisis, with the promise of lengthening days and the summer to come. Everyone understood what was required and why. But as of Thursday, that trust has been broken because the Scottish Government’s rules are not being applied logically and transparently, with relatively low infection areas like Edinburgh forced to accept tough restrictions, lumped in with the Lanarkshires which escape stricter controls even though the contagion appears relatively rampant. Councils not controlled by the SNP are openly complaining to the First Minister who appeases them, like the souls of the dead, with vague offerings of a review when the chances are it will be like this, or worse, until Easter.
And with every cancelled operation, a belief that the NHS is prioritising Covid ahead of other equally life- threatening illnesses will spread like the virus itself. How many cancer patients will have “a degree of Christmas cheer” if they are told to get back in the queue for treatment while the Louisa Jordan hospital set up specially to treat Coronavirus patients lies empty?
But maybe Hallowe’en can serve as a reminder that death is a part of life and, as one of my colleagues said this week, that living has a 100 per cent fatality rate. Covid is here to stay, just one more thing that can get you in the end, but there is no sign of governments planning for a future which can cope. Instead they cling to the myth of a point just round the corner when it will have been magicked away with a spell no stronger than fortitude.