At this time of the year it is traditional for me to moan about the way that Halloween has supplanted Bonfire Night. Think of it as part of my programme of radical nostalgia.This time my views have made the Yorkshire Evening Post, with quotations both from this blog and a telephone interview:
"I definitely think Bonfire Night's being pushed out," says Jonathan Calder, a journalist for the New Statesman magazine who has written about the phenomenon on his popular blog Liberal England.And:
"When I was a boy in the 1960s we always had a family bonfire and fireworks in the back garden and there was no doubt that the great festival at this time of year was Bonfire Night.
"My only contact with Hallowe'en was at Cubs, where we would bring pumpkin lanterns one evening.
"But now there are all these safety warnings and everyone seems to go to organised displays for Bonfire Night, while Hallowe'en has become so commercialised that some of the stuff sold in the supermarkets is quite horrific."
"Over here we have Mischief Night on November 4, which originated in Yorkshire as part of Bonfire Night, but now we're seeing something much more in common with the trick or treating you get in the US
"Perhaps it's a generational thing, but I don't think I've seen anyone collecting a penny for the Guy since the 1980s. There's no sense of kids being outside and having fun in the dark any more, they all seem to go trick or treating and always under heavy parental supervision."
2 comments:
Oh Yes, Mischief Night. Gangs of young boys roaming the streets. Taking garden gates off. Where houses were built as symmetrical pairs with front doors very close together, tying together the door handles of adjacent properties. Setting off bangers...
The adults stayed indoors for fear of the swarms outside (or so it seemed to us).
Oh Yes, Mischief Night. Gangs of young boys roaming the streets. Taking garden gates off. Where houses were built as symmetrical pairs with front doors very close together, tying together the door handles of adjacent properties. Setting off bangers... The adults stayed indoors for fear of the swarms outside (or so it seemed to us).
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