The Year's Turning
Nov. 1st, 2008 08:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
f4f3Last night I was at a fancy dress party, tonight I watched a lantern parade and then a fireworks display. Last night was halloween, tonight just a bit early for Guy Fawkes night.
I stood on the Green in Lochgilphead, my head thrown back, watching the fireworks and trying to figure out why I was laughing like a loon, and why I had so much fun last night.
Part of it goes back to childhood. You know what they say about making your own entertainment? Well back before t'internet, before DVDs, Christ, before VCRs, when there were three channels on TV, and all of them in black and white (we didn't own a colour TV until I was about 9 or 10) then the year was measured out in holidays, Christmas, New Year, Easter, The Fair Fortnight, Halloween, Guy Fawkes night, back to Christmas. Those days were the lodestars of the year, and we spent months waiting for them. I remember buying a 50p savings stamp every week from my pocket money so that when it came time to have a fortnight in Blackpool, I had five or ten pounds to spend.
Halloween and Guy Fawkes came almost back to back, just when the days got darkest, and when they were over we could start thinking about Christmas.
Halloween was always a big thing in Glasgow. There wasn't a lot of external sign that it was approaching. No cards in the shops, no pumpkins being carved, no spooky decorations. Haloween cakes, orange faces with charms baked in appeared in the bakeries. Some masks were sold, but most children just made their own costumes, and went door to door, telling a joke or singing a comic song. It wasn't mentioned in school, the churches disaproved quietly, knowing we would be in mass the next day for All Souls day, a holiday of obligation, following the dark night of disguise and antic freedom.
I remember seeing a horror movie when I was in my very early teens, Halloween 2 or something, and being amazed that the Americans celebrated the holiday. It didn't seem like the sort of thing they'd be into, too dark, too anarchic. Years later I found out about "Trick and Treating" and it made a bit more sense. Well, we gave them bluegrass and bagpipes, they could take Halloween too, and get that wrong.
Guy Fawkes night is a strange one. I never thought for a minute that it was a celebration of burning a Catholic. I never even thought it strange that we should be remembering someone trying to blow up parliament. Guy Fawkes wasn't a bogey-man, he was kind of a hero.
For years the bon fires were a neighbourhood thing, almost every close having its own. I remember half a dozen in the back closes of Chapel Street, built from any scrap of wood that could be scavenged. Fireworks were tiny things, sparklers and Catherine wheels (commemorating the martyrdom of some saint or another). You worried about someone lobbing a banger at you. I remember, must have been when I was 10 or 11, seeing someone light a banger, drop it into a glass Irn-Bru bottle, and screw the top back on before he threw it away (not at me, or at anyone, just away). I saw a flash inside the bottle, then glass everywhere. I learned more about physics in that second than I did in five years of classes.
Last night I walked throught the West End on Halloween. I passed Dorothy, The Tin Man, the Cowardly Lion, the Scarecrow. Wizards, Witches, Elfs and Lewis Hamilton. Two 118s, and a dragon. I smiled a lot. The lords of misrule were out, and anyone could be anything.
Tonight I was in Lochgilphead, and the lantern parade was full of children who'd spent two weeks making wicker frames for fishes and skulls and bears and princesses and a puffer and an elephant. There were drums and bagpipes, the smell of hamburgers and chips, kids waving lightsabers and swinging lightsticks.
I watched the fireworks, marvelling that there are still new tricks to play with black powder and rare earths, hearing the oohs and ahs, hearing some of them coming out of my own mouth.
Tonight was old magic, a few miles from Kilmartin Glen, from the standing stones. Last night the magic of masks, a few miles from where I grew up. Old magic, mask magic.
The magic of the year's turning.
I stood on the Green in Lochgilphead, my head thrown back, watching the fireworks and trying to figure out why I was laughing like a loon, and why I had so much fun last night.
Part of it goes back to childhood. You know what they say about making your own entertainment? Well back before t'internet, before DVDs, Christ, before VCRs, when there were three channels on TV, and all of them in black and white (we didn't own a colour TV until I was about 9 or 10) then the year was measured out in holidays, Christmas, New Year, Easter, The Fair Fortnight, Halloween, Guy Fawkes night, back to Christmas. Those days were the lodestars of the year, and we spent months waiting for them. I remember buying a 50p savings stamp every week from my pocket money so that when it came time to have a fortnight in Blackpool, I had five or ten pounds to spend.
Halloween and Guy Fawkes came almost back to back, just when the days got darkest, and when they were over we could start thinking about Christmas.
Halloween was always a big thing in Glasgow. There wasn't a lot of external sign that it was approaching. No cards in the shops, no pumpkins being carved, no spooky decorations. Haloween cakes, orange faces with charms baked in appeared in the bakeries. Some masks were sold, but most children just made their own costumes, and went door to door, telling a joke or singing a comic song. It wasn't mentioned in school, the churches disaproved quietly, knowing we would be in mass the next day for All Souls day, a holiday of obligation, following the dark night of disguise and antic freedom.
I remember seeing a horror movie when I was in my very early teens, Halloween 2 or something, and being amazed that the Americans celebrated the holiday. It didn't seem like the sort of thing they'd be into, too dark, too anarchic. Years later I found out about "Trick and Treating" and it made a bit more sense. Well, we gave them bluegrass and bagpipes, they could take Halloween too, and get that wrong.
Guy Fawkes night is a strange one. I never thought for a minute that it was a celebration of burning a Catholic. I never even thought it strange that we should be remembering someone trying to blow up parliament. Guy Fawkes wasn't a bogey-man, he was kind of a hero.
For years the bon fires were a neighbourhood thing, almost every close having its own. I remember half a dozen in the back closes of Chapel Street, built from any scrap of wood that could be scavenged. Fireworks were tiny things, sparklers and Catherine wheels (commemorating the martyrdom of some saint or another). You worried about someone lobbing a banger at you. I remember, must have been when I was 10 or 11, seeing someone light a banger, drop it into a glass Irn-Bru bottle, and screw the top back on before he threw it away (not at me, or at anyone, just away). I saw a flash inside the bottle, then glass everywhere. I learned more about physics in that second than I did in five years of classes.
Last night I walked throught the West End on Halloween. I passed Dorothy, The Tin Man, the Cowardly Lion, the Scarecrow. Wizards, Witches, Elfs and Lewis Hamilton. Two 118s, and a dragon. I smiled a lot. The lords of misrule were out, and anyone could be anything.
Tonight I was in Lochgilphead, and the lantern parade was full of children who'd spent two weeks making wicker frames for fishes and skulls and bears and princesses and a puffer and an elephant. There were drums and bagpipes, the smell of hamburgers and chips, kids waving lightsabers and swinging lightsticks.
I watched the fireworks, marvelling that there are still new tricks to play with black powder and rare earths, hearing the oohs and ahs, hearing some of them coming out of my own mouth.
Tonight was old magic, a few miles from Kilmartin Glen, from the standing stones. Last night the magic of masks, a few miles from where I grew up. Old magic, mask magic.
The magic of the year's turning.
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Date: 2008-11-02 11:38 pm (UTC)I also remember doing my party piece for the old lady a few doors down, and being rewarded with apples, a pile of nuts in their shells, and home-made treacle toffee in waxed paper.
I made my own celebrations this year, as I've finally accepted that the English not only don't get it, but are scared by it on all levels. Mind you, we were in Glastonbury on Saturday and there was more than a hint of a dazed New Year's Day about the proceedings.
Love the lantern pictures. I love the fire aspect, the American jack'o'lanterns, the Scottish fires and even the fizzing sparklers...
...i'm always intrigued by American Halloween because it's both cosy and kitsch, at one level, and completely Gothic at another. All those suburban American houses with coffins on their front lawn, or headstones with bloody arms rising from the grave.