nunoncastors

You know what, I’ve had a think and decided that I’m entirely right to dismiss Halloween as a load of commercial bollocks. So, kindly ignore the stuff written in the following block quote and subscribe wholly to the bitter and bilious sentiment of the original tirade. Onwards!

DANGER, WILL ROBINSON! DANGER!

This is an important update that must be heeded prior to reading the following entry. I woke up late today, missed breakfast, missed my bus, stubbed my toe and was hassled for change by some skag-head while trying to buy a copy of Private Eye. The frankly vitriolic tone of what comes next reflects this.

Sorry.

SERIOUSLY, WILL ROBINSON. DANGER!

So, Halloween again is it? Well, it is if you can wade through all the Christmas items already on sale (for fuck’s sake) to obtain your plastic Vampire teeth and £6 tattered cape. Nothing says Halloween like misplaced folklore.

Anyway, I imagine you’re all looking forward to all the Trick or Treaters extorting chocolate from you in order to ensure that your house isn’t egged and your car keyed. Maybe you’ll be attending a party where, by some unwritten rule, there will be at least two people dressed as ‘sexy cats’ endeavouring to be – well, sexy and one idiot student dressed as a Pirate and taking about Ninjas.

I know I am. I just love being caught up in the spooky commercialisation of a Christianised celebration of a Gaelic festival that has largely lost all meaning in our non-agrarian society. Well, other than to generate cash, obviously. I think it’s fantastic. Nothing cheers me more than the relentlessly empty onslaught of consumerism. I just can’t wait to buy more crap in order to ‘celebrate’ something that no longer means anything and perpetuate the endless cycle of dross.

Anyone still have a bone fire in their village, or how about a significantly less macabre bonfire? No? Do you light your hearth from a communal flame at all? How about experience any sense of community, togetherness or shared experience?

No?

How odd.

How about, do you buy some fucking tat ‘because it’s Halloween’ and unthinkingly, ‘that’s what you do?’ Not for any specific reason, but just because it’s Halloween and that’s what you do at Halloween, right? Sound familiar?

*gasp*

Now I know what you’re thinking, you’re thinking that I should stop being so negative, that it’s just an excuse to have some fun and go to a party. Well, yes, it is, but since when did you need an excuse to do that?

So, Happy New Year to all you neo-pagans out there, at least you try. Even if you do know, deep down, that it’s all a bunch of crap.

Whooo! Ghosts! Pictures of pumpkins etc…