Halloween: The Forgotten Windows

31st Oct 2003

Halloween: The Forgotten Windows
Mickey Mowse

...then change the disguise and do a second round.

Its Halloween night, the last significant calendar event before Christmas. After this it is acceptable for shops and businesses to start dusting off the tinsel and Christmas lights although waiting until December would be nice to for fear of completely diluting of the event. "Christmas", according to the big stores who get the decorations out in mid-October, now takes up 2.5 months of the 12. That's more than 20% of the year. Remember when you were young and wished it could be Christmas everyday? Who knows what'll be like when today's four year olds are the department store mangers.

Several towns around the county as well as the city centre already have shops that have decorated their front windows for Christmas....i.e. before Halloween. That's not on at all. What's wrong with Halloween like?

If this worrying trend continues we could arrive at a situation where Halloween will be completely forgotten, gradually erased by anti-Halloween/Pro-Yuletide establishments. Being the understanding people that we Corkonians are we must understand that in many of those shops' cases Halloween isn't exactly the most marketable commodity. Take a place where posh old dolls shop, like Brown Thomas who already have their Christmas window sorted (no doubt the hand-me-downs from last year's Dublin window). They want you in to buy your presents early and to spend EUR340 on a 5ml bottle of perfume for the old doll. Why would they bother with Halloween? They're not going to be able to supply you with Goblin's Breath deodorant, Witches feet perfume or the latest from O'Flynn Laboratories: Eau de Noel - For Men (preferably with Irish Citizenship).

The thing is though that Christmas shop windows can be a bit boring if we're honest about it. Patrick St. is not the scariest place in the world, particularly with all the renewal works and main drainage stuff in its "Final Phase", at least on the surface so creating scary Halloween atmosphere is challenging.

There is one place in Cork however not far from the city centre where business is booming. One tiny Cork town, that employs thousands of Corkonians and brings in hundreds of millions of Euro in revenue each year and certainly the scariest place in Cork to live. Yet far from planning for how they'll decorate their premises for Christmas, in this place you can go to sample a spooky Halloween atmosphere 365 days-a-year. As their signs say "Failte/Welcome/Bienvenue/Wilkommen to Ringaskiddy".

Firstly should you journey there by car the air is dark and heavy and you need to slow down to avoid giant articulated lorries that suddenly burst out of the thick mist roaring their engines loud enough to catch your already tense bowels by surprise. As you get nearer to the town centre you will see towering metal structures with randomly positioned lights a bit like like Dracula's gaf in Transylvania. Surrounded in a veil of rising white smoke the rather odd thing about Ringers is that tens of thousands of people work there but no matter what time of the day or night you go there it feels like a ghost town. When you look in at any of the factories you won't see a soul, the buildings have very few windows and most structures seem to be variations on shiny metal chimneys with no natural light allowed entry. What's that about vampires and daylight again?

You might decide to get out of the car for a stroll around the town, take a walk on the "beautiful" silicon cyanide Haulbowline beach or if you've got a chemical suit handy take a dip in the carbon-gank-oxysulphate green waters. Tonight though you might fancy bringing some of the local kids down there for the authentic Transylvanian experience - maybe even try a spot of trick or treating.

Many kids who go out trick-or-treating tomorrow night will be directed by their folks to the houses of local business people - knowing that the chances of a successful bounty are higher. Business people, particularly those without kids are usually oblivious to the whole thing and can't understand why there are a bunch of kids in Bernie Murphy masks standing in their porch holding out plastic bags. For fear of embarrassment or being accused of being "fierce scanty" by the three year old son of their next door neighbour a wallet full of fivers comes to the rescue once they realise what's going on. An expensive but worthwhile gesture to the local community.

What about the kids in Ringaskiddy though and the "local businesses" there? More like global corporations really. What reaction would they get if they approached those towering structures that churn out various forms of gank, held out a plastic bag and said "trick or treat, smell my feet or give me something nice to eat" ? Firstly we can suggest that most employees and residents of Ringers would gladly smell a mushroom and toe jam encrusted pair of feet instead of the stinking "dead fish" smell that seeps from the neighbouring chemical factories. So any kids who have been deliberately keeping their feet out the bath and soap free will have little in the way of threat to anyone living or working in Ringaskiddy.

When the night is over kids return after a long and hard fought battle against tight fisted neighbours who want to know exactly what kids are behind the masks and donate treats in accordance with how much their parents donated to the park's (completely unofficial and self-endorsed) "Residents Committee" fund. A family who haven't attended many meetings or made little in the way of donation because they have to work late and weekends to pay off a ludicrously large mortgage will be coldly discriminated against. Junior will be identified at the door step and will be lucky if he gets two monkey nuts as a token while his little friends are bestowed with crisps, sweets and whoppa bars.

As November begins and the little ones have been discharged from hospital (for blacking out after consuming 135 sherbet bombs in five minutes) the masks and costumes are cast aside to make way for Christmas fever. Meanwhile, despite the brushing aside of Halloween by the big department stores the misfortunate residents of Ringaskiddy and surrounding area must live on with round-the-clock Halloween with more plans for yet another horrific ethically indefensible toxic experiment - forced us by the Dublin government. The County Council voted against it (allegedly our political representatives) yet the project can still go ahead!!??! Democracy eh? Trick or treat?