Dear Fiona,
My children (aged 5 and 7) are obsessed with Halloween and that wonderful animated film about the Mexican Dia de Muertos, Coco – and they’re desperate to decorate the house. I’m a little hesitant because I’ve always thought it slightly naff, but I’m wondering if there is a way to do it well, for I’d like to make my children happy – and I’m also totally up for making it an annual tradition and finding ways to make the whole event special – and not naff at all.
My husband reckons this is impossible – he says that Halloween is an Americanism, and not to be indulged – but maybe it’s America I should be looking to? Maybe they’ve found a way of doing it in a sophisticated manner?
As you can possibly tell, I’m quite enthusiastic when it comes to decorating and occasions, so I’m slightly using my children’s wants as an excuse to act on my innermost desires (though I’ve never decorated for Halloween before!) And while I’m here, my children think we should segue straight from Halloween into Christmas – I’ve suggested that November is far too early to get a Christmas tree – but is it really?
Thank you so much,
Love,
A Secret Halloween Lover XX
Dear Secret Halloween Lover
I have a confession to make: I too have always resisted decorating for Halloween, for exactly the same reason, and to the eternal disappointment of my children who are 13 and 11 and still very into it. We’re not alone: “Halloween decorating has a tendency to look a little naff,” moots Tiffany Duggan, founder of Studio Duggan – and “[it] is naff” confirms Brandon Schubert – who is Texan by birth, and thus we’ll be coming back to him regarding that element. In the immediate though, your letter does raise one obvious point: does its being naff matter, if it brings so much pleasure to so many? When we lived in London, we – with all the children’s school friends – regularly went trick-or-treating along certain streets just off Queen’s Park that went absolutely all out (think giant cobwebs, light-up coffins, skeletons falling out of windows) while simultaneously collecting a handsome sum of money for Great Ormond Street Hospital from the hordes of spookily attired visitors. I wouldn’t describe that as naff (they raised thousands) – but admittedly it works because of the cause, and because it’s (almost) every house on a street. We all know that a single residence with a rain-drenched supermarket-bought ghoul doesn’t look quite as good, and “the idea of using orange and black spooky decorations around my house is a strong ‘no’,” says Brandon. You have, in any case, specifically asked for non-naff ideas, so let’s get going with that, for certainly everybody is on board with the idea of marking the season, which is otherwise, describes Lucy Clayton, dolls’ house designer and fancy dress expert extraordinaire, “this dreary, liminal moment between back-to-school and yuletide.” And, says Brandon, “it’s a good way to delay Christmas decorations that otherwise have a way of creeping forward each year.” (More of that later, too.)
But first, and especially because you mention the film Coco, it’s worth looking at the whys – and pointing out that your husband isn’t entirely correct. The word Halloween comes from All Hallows’ Eve – the evening before All Saints’ Day (November 1) and All Souls’ Day (November 2), the time when Western Christians honour the saints and pray for the recently departed, and that’s where we find the roots of today’s more commercial celebrations. It’s not entirely linear – and nor were all traditions practiced everywhere – but it’s thought that trick or treating stems from the 15th-century custom of baking and sharing soul cakes (a sort of shortbread with sweet spices); children would go door-to-door, collecting them, in exchange for praying for the dead, and candles would be lit to summon the souls home. Often, while ‘souling’, the children would carry jack-o-lanterns carved from hollowed out turnips to ward off evil spirits – because, at the same time, it was believed that All Hallows’ Eve provided one last chance for the recently departed to gain vengeance on their enemies before moving on to the next world. Hence donning masks and costumes as a disguise. An alternative explanation for dressing up was the belief that, on the same evening, the dead of the churchyards rose for one wild, hideous carnival known as the danse macabre, which was sometimes enacted in pageants with people dressing up as corpses. As you can imagine, none of this went down terribly well in the English Reformation, and when Halloween was revived it had more of a folk angle, and was related to the end of the harvest season and the pagan festival Sahmain, long-held as a time when the veils between the worlds are thought to be thin, and an occasion to honour and connect with our ancestors who reach back to us as we reach forward to them. Festivities such as apple bobbing and fortune telling were incorporated, and then then came the classic American-made 20th-century horror films, from 1931’s Frankenstein to 1984's A Nightmare on Elm Street, and you have the making of modern Halloween.
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Or rather, you have the making of modern Halloween here, in the UK. “In the US, Halloween isn’t really about death,” says Brandon. “It’s about spooky and weird – you’re far more likely to see a tongue-in-cheek costume or a celebrity impersonation than you are to see a zombie.” (Which of course, we all know from watching 2004’s excellent Mean Girls.) What this means is that while there are those who go in for everything Brandon “especially hates”, namely “huge spiderwebs hanging off the front of houses, and animatronic witches or skeletons with motion sensors for eyes,” there are also those who decorate more for the time of year, and that “can definitely be a tasteful seasonal pastime!” says Brandon. (Hurray.) “These decorations generally take place on the front porch or the pathway leading from the street to the house; when I was growing up, my mother always planted an array of flowerpots with ornamental cabbages and dusky-coloured chrysanthemums. There was usually an autumn foliage wreath on the front door, and inside, she would always have a centrepiece arrangement on the dining table of decorative squashes and few branches. It’s a chance to change the colour palette, to stop and enjoy the burnt orange, brown, deep green and pale yellow of harvest time – and you can keep the decorations up for Thanksgiving.”
And so you have choices; you can treat the paragraphs above as a pick’n’mix buffet of options, while simultaneously working with occasional self-imposed rules that might be to do with sustainability (yes to piles of pumpkins, for afterwards you’ll turn them into chutney, jam and pumpkin pie) or with ensuring that your house isn’t so terrifying that toddlers have to be detoured. “I avoid anything too macabre, so no bones, ghouls, animatronics or zombies – and I think it’s the height of bad taste to wrap your house in police tape,” says Lucy Clayton (who is busy finding alternative routes to her daughter’s nursery, on account of the enthusiastic embracing by others of all the above. My daughter, on the other hand, keeps nipping off to look a house five down where she’s convinced the body bag that has been suspended from an upstairs window has a real person in it.) “I focus on things that feel magical rather than scary,” imparts Lucy. “This year we have a hop garland encircling the door, with teal grosgrain ribbons, mirrored gold stars and ‘fairy houses’ – which are lights in jam jars.”
If you’re holding your own danse macabre, or contemporary version thereof, you need to think about interiors, too. If you’re low on time or inspiration, and are catering for children, Meri Meri has a great Halloween selection (and if you’re careful, you can pack it all away and use it again next year) – though that might be missing an opportunity to indulge your inner creativity. Lucy reckons the best theme she’s ever conjured “was a forest of paper leaves, made from pages of Gothic novels.” That same year, for a party for grown-ups only, she served “poisons,” for which she’s kindly provided the menu (above) – albeit with an important proviso: “based on the scenes that followed, I don’t advise starting with compulsory absinthe.” Tiffany Duggan recommends “laying the table with a beautiful Romany-style tablecloth, vintage lace, tall dark tapered candles and autumnal branches. Swap table lamp bulbs for flickering candle bulbs, scatter around tarot cards, fill Murano bowls with treats – and perhaps the occasional surprise spider.” The spider, explains Tiffany, has impeccable precedence if you look at the American decorator Mario Buatta, “who famously carried around a plastic cockroach named Harold to play practical jokes on his friends.” And those spiders – or cockroaches – are worth incorporating, for what you need to remember is that you can accidentally stray into naff by trying too hard to be tasteful (it’s a tightrope!)
But now that we’re back to naff, there is one last point I’m going to make, which is that there is a time and a place to avoid naff, and it’s more in permanent decoration than it is in something transitory that you’re enjoying with your children. Circling back to my description of those streets I mentioned in the first paragraph (they’ve got their own Instagram, if you’re interested), I’d like to cite this magazine’s Decoration Editor Ruth Sleightholme’s observation that “maximum naff gets away with it because it’s so confident and happy.” So by all means go heavier on seasonal than spooky, especially if that means you can keep the décor up for longer (for while by Ruth’s argument you can't put up a Christmas tree in November, as unless it’s artificial, all the needles will drop off long before December 25) – I reckon there’s room for a little indulging of child-led want, too – to which end, this year (finally!), I’m going to join you in decorating the house. I’m off to paint pumpkins à la Yayoi Kusama, collect leaf-laden branches before it rains anymore, and then cut up and stuff tights for my daughter’s spider costume that is taking inspiration from both Louise Bourgeois and Sarah Lucas. But I’m also planning to break up the consumption of the trick-or-treating haul with our own version of soul cakes, and we’ll observe, as we always do, All Souls’ Day, and make time to talk about those who are no longer with us. It brings a depth of meaning – for us – but meaning and a sense of special also comes in the memories that you’ll make, however you decide to do Halloween. The joy is in the variety of possibilities.
I hope that this has given you some ideas – and I hope that you, your children – and your husband – have fun.
With love,
Fiona XX
