Witches, scary pumpkins (or turnips!) and visitors from the Otherworld

I was recently watching my daughter carve a pumpkin while I was making dinner.

I was cutting up a turnip. Much as I like them, they are not something that I buy a lot as I find them hard to peel. Indeed, a chef friend once told me that nothing ruins a knife like a turnip.

And I couldn’t help but think about how much easier the pumpkin is to carve than the turnip Jack O’Lanterns that people made here in Donegal years ago. 

One of my own earliest memories of Halloween is of watching my father hollow out and carve a turnip with his pocket knife before putting a candle into it and hanging it up. I am still in awe of his patience. As I said, turnips are not the easiest thing to work with!

My late mother loved Halloween, and we went all out to celebrate it. Not by today’s standards of course, but certainly against the backdrop of the late seventies and early eighties, Halloween was a big deal in our house.

Games included apple bobbing and hanging apples from a string and trying to catch them with our teeth. 

We would usually have nice apples at this time of year, maybe a bag of russet apples bought from Foodland supermarket, or delicious Armagh apples from the roadside vendors that brought the Orchard County’s delicious fruit around the country every autumn.

The cooking apples from our own trees would be used to make delicious apple tarts, with ‘silver’ coins concealed inside - a real treat for those lucky enough to find them; though in hindsight, I realise that they were carefully placed amidst the fruit in such a way that everyone got a coin.

Hazelnuts would be gathered from nearby trees, most of them picked up from where they had fallen on the ground, bringing the rich smell of leaf litter and autumnal forests into the house.

The only things I remember us buying from the shops were the barm brack, a bag of monkey nuts and masks which we referred to as ‘false faces.’

By the time I first heard the term ‘trick or treat’ I was coming towards the end of primary school.

Someone explained the concept to me - you called to people’s houses and if they didn’t give you a treat, you played a trick on them. I remember getting dressed up in the most fashionable Halloween costume of the 1980s, the bin bag, and heading out with a few similarly-clad friends. 

I was quite worried about the idea of playing a mean trick on someone just because they didn’t give us sweets but fortunately that didn’t happen and my one and only trick or treating experience was a success.

This time of year has long been associated with the dead, and with superstitions relating to the Otherworld. In countries such as Mexico this is taken to a whole other level with the Day of the Dead festivities. Here in Ireland too, the dead are celebrated at Samhain and All Souls Day. This is yet another example of ancient festivals and traditions having blended seamlessly with Christian feast days to survive into modern times. 

The tradition of telling ghost stories is very much tied to those traditions, with the older children in the area taking great pleasure in scaring the hell  out of the younger ones. 

Nowadays, ghost stories are still popular, be it through the oral tradition or in the form of Halloween being celebrated with a horror movie night.

Modern technology has added to the celebrations in other ways too. In my family, we  start playing our Halloween Spotify playlist once we are into October, and it gets added to every year.

Spooky lights, automated toys, light up broomsticks, and a whole range of other gizmos and gadgets are widely available and all add to the fun. 

Shops go all out with their Halloween decorations, to great effect. I remember when one of my girls was small she became very frightened going past a particular shop in Donegal Town, insisting there was a ‘really scary lady’ in the window. I went back to take a look and discovered a very lifelike witch on her broom.

It has been three years since Halloween was celebrated in any kind of communal way. This will be the first post-pandemic Samhain and Halloween celebration, and there are many plans afoot. From children’s fancy dress parties to pumpkin carving competitions, a Samhain feast at Biddy’s o’Barnes to discos, themed nights out, and gatherings in homes up and down the country, this age-old festival will be enjoyed with newfound enthusiasm and appreciation.

I’m looking forward to gathering the last of our apples and blackberries to make some spooky looking - but very tasty - pies. 

Whatever way you choose to celebrate, Happy Halloween.

Oíche Shamhna shona daoibh go léir.