Less sugar, more magic: reclaiming Halloween

The spooky season is upon us again. I have a love/hate relationship with this time of year. 

What I love

The seasonal shift into Autumn. I love the colours lighting up the landscape, the crisp air in the mornings, the physical shift I feel in my body towards slowing down. This time of year is my reflection zone as I lean into the gentle feeling of being comfortable and unhurried that October brings, and I find it so much more helpful than doing the same thing in January. 

What I don’t love: possibly an unpopular opinion

The rising panic about Christmas - it’s palpable. And while I try not to buy into it myself, it’s hard not to be impacted by the conversations, anticipation and advertising that is all underpinned by heightened pressure and sometimes outright stress. I saw Christmas mince pies in the supermarket last week and we haven’t even got to Halloween yet! Argh. Stress massively unhelpful to anyone who wants to feel well, you can read this blog about how to reduce the chance of it creeping in.

And Halloween….I didn’t grow up with it and find it hard to get over the gross excesses of this period. I’m not all “bah humbug” about it actually. There is something pretty cool about whole neighbourhoods who decorate their front yards and entrance ways - I definitely love the community spirit and fun spectacle that is created in doing so. If this was more of a gathering together with your neighbours and allowed a safe space for the kids to ‘roam the streets’ nearby that would be awesome.

But the thing I find, and I can actually think of no other way to say it, grotesque about Halloween is the push, push, push to buy and feed our precious littlies a gratuitous amount of absolute junk.

I have been appalled by witnessing children carrying rubbish sacks full of this stuff as they swing from door to door to be greeted, for the most part not by friendly neighbours who will admire well-thought out or enthusiastically thrown-together costumes and ask for a bit of a song or a joke in return for ONE sweet treat but instead pre-assembled bags or ‘help yourself’ bowls left at the door!

In the current climate of disastrous chronic health issues driven by metabolic dysfunction being experienced by younger and younger people surely this is outrageous.

What is available as Halloween treats in large boxes or on bulk buy offer at the supermarket is highly addictive, potentially toxic and absolutely detracts from the desire for the lower ‘hit’ but much more beneficial impact of real food. And these ‘treats’, when consumed by the handful, are not even being perceived as treats by our brains as the more we consume the more our senses are dulled to the hit. 

And it’s not even good news for those parents who are discerning and help their kids to make a choice about what will be kept and what will be thrown out. All those plastic wrappers go to landfill, continuing the cycle of nano-plastics breaking down and infiltrating our environment, in a nasty loop of creating further disruption to our precious planetary ecosystem and to the quality of the food we can produce from the Earth.

For many of us that one explosion of a ‘treat’ night for our kids (all in the spirit of good fun) catapults us into a very lengthy period of drama and and drain on our willpower reserves when we then have to say “no” to the daily pleading from our kids to dip into the stash that they know is probably still somewhere in the house because we didn’t make good on our threat to throw it all out. Good fun? This is more like a parent’s nightmare, on repeat.

What I'd like to see instead

A less is more approach. A rekindled focus on community fun and neighbourly connection with a limited availability of consciously chosen treats (that, let’s face it, many of us love too), so that we and our kids appreciate the true nature of the excitement and wonder that can come at this time of year.

Monkey nuts and apples might be a bit dated (or retro cool?!) but if they weren’t on a sugar high, what would you like to see your kids come home buzzing about after a night out for Halloween? Join the conversation on my instagram post here.