This is not America

by Rick Johansen

The Americanisation of Britain has been going on for as long as I can remember. KFC, charging extortionate fees for university education, the franchising of sports teams, McDonalds, the introduction of pay television and the attempts to dismantle and weaken public service broadcasters like the BBC, baseball caps, the NFL, the privatisation of health care and the economic neoliberalism that has infected our country for many years. Plenty to concern ourselves about here without having to fret about Halloween but that appears to be the one aspect of Americanisation that bugs us most.

Actually, Halloween originated in our country, albeit in the Celtic fringes. What we have today is very much the Americanised version of it. It didn’t exist to any extent, if at all, when I was growing up. There were no children trick or treating, there were no fancy dress parties with families dressed up in bloodthirsty, ghoulish costumes with the express aim, it has to be said, of getting as drunk as possible. In fact, we were invited to two parties this year and had reluctantly to turn down both of them due to a long-standing private arrangement and celebration. I was sorry to miss both, though I am, even at the best of times, a reluctant party-goer.

My own children, before they became adults, obviously, went around our village, essentially collecting sweets, or trick or treating as it is known. The truth is that they had no idea what to do in the event of being refused confectionary. Happily, this never happened as they always returned with industrial quantities of sugar-based products. I suppose it could be a pain in the arse if a constant stream of children knock on the door and perhaps we are lucky where we live because we rarely, if ever, get callers at all. Yet when they do call, I find the whole thing rather sweet, in the cute sense. This year, I have a large, unopened bag of lollipops which, given the state of my teeth, would best remain unopened.

America gets a bum rap about many things and given the current state of world affairs it probably deserves one. Many of the traditions of Halloween were actually imported to America by immigrants and became part of its culture. It was inevitable, I suppose, that given almost everything else America does we do at a later date, trick or treating would follow.

My kids seemed to enjoy Halloween, as adults they seem less interested. That’s what I try to remember when a gaggle of youngsters line up at my front door in the expectation of sweets. If Halloween was the worst America could inflict on us, I’d be a happy man. One of the first things Theresa May did when she became prime minister was to invite Donald Trump for a UK state visit. To be honest, I am slightly more concerned about that.

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