The real horror of Halloween is NZ doesn't celebrate it

Wednesday, 27 October 2021

OPINION: Much of New Zealand will be in lockdown on Sunday.

While poor Auckland has been doing it for months, a couple of days from now most other suburbs and cities will be joining them, for a few hours at least.

It won’t be because of Covid-19, nor a show of unity for our northern cousins, but because closing the curtains and locking the gates is how NZ celebrates Halloween, and it’s time that changed. Immediately.

That Aotearoa refuses to celebrate Halloween was one of many umbrages I nursed through my privileged childhood. Raised on American sitcoms, my generation knew what we were missing out on; we’d seen the Tanners and Huxtables have a rollicking good time, and this just proved what we’d long suspected: our country sucked.

**READ MORE:

* Halloween in Auckland: The best places to trick or treat

* Halloween may be 'too American' for some, but it's fine by me

* Halloween is here to stay in New Zealand, so embrace it

**

We weren’t even asking for a public holiday, just the adoption of one more completely irrelevant tradition – like Guy Fawkes. We wanted pumpkins, we wanted trick or treating, and while we were there we wanted Cosby jerseys too, dammit.

Our parents forbade it. “This is Nu Ziland, not bloody America,” they’d bellow collectively, my mother going one ominous step further.

“The day my children beg for food on people’s doorsteps will be over my dead body,” she said, chilling us with the suitably Halloweenish image. I reminded her of this the other day, and she rightly guessed my intentions: “Write about me, and it’ll be over your dead body, Virginia.”

When I became a parent I understood how mum felt all those years ago when her words rang in my ears at a school lolly scramble. The sight of my children rolling in the dirt fighting once-friends for candy was a horror, and I avoided them thereafter. (My children and lolly scrambles both.)

But back in those unhappy Halloweenless days of childhood it all seemed terribly unfair. Come October 31 the only tradition we participated in was drawing the curtains and shutting ourselves in like it was the night of The Purge.

What made it worse was some children were allowed to trick or treat. We’d peep out the windows and watch those brave, sad souls loitering by the gate, daring each other to walk up the path and knock on the door.

“Release the hounds,” my mother would say upon spying them, knowing full well a pair of bichon frise were no real terror to sugar-crazed children. The only actual Halloween horror my brother and I really experienced was when a trick or treater actually made it to the door, only to be greeted with the disdain normally reserved for bible-bashers.

Years later my mates celebrated Halloween by throwing annual dress-up parties. Having missed the memo that as a young woman my costume should be tantalising, not tragic, my first party was my last when, surrounded by sexy witches and sexy cats, I spent the night explaining I was a postage stamp, not a television.

And as the sins of our parents are ours to repeat, I allowed my children to trick or treat only at the neighbours. After two years of unanswered knocks the kids gave up.

All my personal trauma aside, NZ should embrace Halloween and now more than ever.

Halloween gives us a chance to meet our neighbours; behave like kids again, and indulge in a bit of pretend horror to take our minds off the very real horror we’re currently surrounded with.

So this year I’m going trick or treating for the very first time.

I’m going to go as the invisible man. As a middle-aged woman I don’t even need to wear a costume.