Seasonal Madness

 Falloweenmas…. It’s a new season which combines Autumn (fall), Halloween and Christmas! Or the shops think it is as there is just one big, messy, cluttered shambles of pumpkins, autumnal garlands, witches hats, skeletons, Christmas trees, Santas, baubles and tinsel with fireworks going off anytime from mid Oct to mid Nov - Urgh! I hate it! I like the seasons to be tidy and in the right order. I like Autumn followed by Halloween, then Bonfire night (which is one night not one month) and then Christmas and if you are in the US with Thanksgiving in between! When did it become one huge consumer frenzy?  Don’t know but I think people have gone completely mad!

Autumn is just a season of mellow fruitfulness, not a reason to buy cushions and throws with pumpkins on  and hang plastic wreaths on doors. It used to be a season of long muddy walks through crunching leaf piles, Harvest Festivals and thankfulness for all those who plough the good earth. Conkers and crisp days enjoying late sunshine and nights drawing in with curtains closed by 6pm and the TV on early!

Halloween was a witchy night for playing tricks. My sister’s birthday meant party games involving apples - duck apples to be caught in a washing up bowl, toffee apples to be eaten with sticky hands and apple pie.  Costumes were homemade from mums sheets or black cardboard to make a witch hat - nothing inflatable or plastic to go into the landfill! We made lanterns from turnips - we hadn’t even seen a pumpkin - Carved out with a safety knife and the insides mashed into carrots to be eaten. Trick or Treat was sugar free and just us children running around the street with our lanterns scaring people with maybe a knock and run if we were really daring! It was not a mountain of sugary sweets! 

Bonfire night was preceded with ‘penny for the guy’ and involved pushing an old hat, jacket and pants stuffed with newspapers around in a wheel barrow and neighbours would give a copper or two for fireworks. A bonfire was built as close to Nov 5th with wood and scrap donated if you carted it way in the very useful wheel barrow. If you built it any earlier rival kids would burn it down and you’d be left with no fire on Bonfire Night. A box of fireworks was bought and set up in the garden for after the fire  - milk bottles lined up for rockets and Catherine Wheels pinned to the fence. This was quite strictly controlled by our parents and if my brothers were caught with bangers beforehand they got a hiding! We were told horror stories of lost fingers and disfiguring burns as a deterrent.  We could see our breath when we watched in the garden all wrapped up in knitted things!  We ate hot chestnuts - cooked in coals and sooty jacket potatoes or maybe a hotpot to warm us up and then it was over and a smokey walk to school the following day was the only evidence. It was great!

Christmas followed a whole seven weeks later and shop windows and the town Christmas light were a highlight with the switch-on in December. Towns had a Christian manger scene with baby Jesus magically  added on Christmas Eve. Trees went up the week of Christmas no matter how we begged to put it up earlier and decorations were made with loo rolls, egg boxes, silver foil,  cotton wool and glitter joining the precious gaudy glass baubles and balding tinsel that came out each year. Gifts were mostly things we needed like school stationery and slippers, a scarf and hat with the odd frivolous addition and some sweets and an orange. They were delivered in a pillowcase - not a fancy personalised stocking -  There were six of us and still the lounge wasn’t full of gifts unlike the Christmas Day scenes of hideous overspending that fill social media these days. 

I liked the order of things and miss the warm simplicity of the Festive season. It’s sad that it’s morphed into a stressed out shopping spree with family spats and over stimulated and over indulged children. The spirit of Christmas and the reasons for all of the above traditions seems to be long forgotten - lost in consumer madness, driven by media hype. I’ve opted out and we keep it as simple and enjoyable as we can. I liked creating magic for my children and to see now they are grown up, they are doing the same for theirs’. 

My message - keep it simple, don’t be pressured into overspending and getting sucked into a commercial feeding frenzy. Remember to embrace the true reason for these traditions and celebrate them the way they were intended to be. Teach your children the value of things and most importantly the consequences to the planet of the mountain of plastic and harmful rubbish that the unnecessary decor and seasonal trash creates. 

Before we know it, it will be Backtoschoospringeaster! and the madness continues!