I had a deprived Australian childhood, so I’d never dressed up for Halloween before. Trick-or-treating wouldn’t have been particularly practicable in the neighbourhood I grew up in anyway.
But: Celebrating the final harvest, starting the dark half of the year, boundaries between the living and the dead becoming blurred, all sorts of dead souls and creatures from the underworld coming back to life and wreaking havoc, and everyone running round dressed up in an attempt to mimic or placate the spirits. Or in an attempt to get candy from their neighbours. Or just an excuse to wear a silly costume (and perhaps as little clothing as possible) and drink copious amounts of alcohol. So, a snapshot of Halloween 2007 in Banff:
And I just discovered that I really should have been carving a Halloween turnip (or a mangelwurzel). It’s traditional. This pumpkin business is modern rubbish.