h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

When it comes to etiquette in the neighbourhood, politeness is observed, in the main, 364 days a year; in Britain we acknowledge our neighbours with a cheery smile, or even a conservative head nod, and nobody is really outwardly rude.

At Halloween that all goes out the window. Or rather, in through the door and in your face.

Once a year, on 31 October, British kids get free rein to impose their greed, vulgarity and ove-indulgence on their neighbours.

Now, I'm all in favour of kids having the opportunity to get together and have a laugh. 'Freedom of expression' and all that. And the original American tradition of 'trick or treat' sees kids getting together, having fun Halloween party food, making fun costumes & lanterns and then, clutching special little Halloween paper bags, off they trot to a few homes to play a game.

I think the word 'game' is important here. 'Trick or treat' means that the American homeowner puts either a trick (a pebble, say) or a treat (piece of candy, for argument's sake) into each bag. The fun part is where the kids compare what they got, who got the most rocks, who got chocolate, who got tickets to the big game (only kidding).

In Britain, the loose translation of this popular American game is that homeowners have a choice; they either hand something good over (chocolate or hard cash) or else be on the receiving end of a creative piece of vandalism (kids have fertile imaginations, let's not forget). Anyone daring to forego the kind offer to furnish the little cherubs with treats a-plenty can wake up, for example, to a scratched car, flat tyres, house covered in thrown eggs, stink bombs through the letter box or flowers uprooted.

Of course, this is all okay and the whole of Britain blithely and quite happily goes along with it, because, after all, they're only kids and it's 'traditional'. Which is odd, because when I was a kid (20 years ago, I'll admit, but a mere clock tick when you think we were fighting in the Gulf a mere 12 years ago) it was traditional to dress up and just play outside with your friends. That was it. Our parents would have hit the roof if they found out we'd been going door-to-door collecting money & chocolate. My mother certainly wouldn't have shown her face at the WI for a few weeks.

However, let's not berate the kids here - after all, they're just having a good time and enjoying themselves (well, up until 10pm when they discover the second bag of chocolate really was too much after all). Their Halloween tradition is sponsored and condoned by their parents, so it must be okay.

Okay?

Hate to tell you this but the practical jokes on Halloween has been a firm tradition in the US for a good long time. I can never remember getting anything but candy in my bag--but I do remember some "tricks" played on various members of the community where I lived. Most of the tricks were played on people who were just plain awful to the local kids the rest of the year (i.e. accusing us of everything and anything they could think of) or involved "decorating" the school.

The sad thing is, if you look at the history of halloween, tricks being played by children on adults is a well rooted tradition (no I'm not going to go into more detail here--this is really not the forum for it), although in this day and age it is sometimes taken to an extreme.