Halloween... Do kids have it too easy these days? 😒

[Catsup]

In my day and age (many moons ago) my Scottish parents would balk at paying for a pumpkin. They'd then risk a finger (and several hours) hollowing out a turnip, bunging a stumpy candle inside, pulling a bin bag over my head (with head/arm holes), and setting me off on my merry way!... Aibu to really feel my kids with their fancy pants pumpkins and actual costumes haven't actually lived?

*never, not nexer

Getting hit repeatedly in the face by a hard apple swinging on a string, followed by water boarding dunking for apples. Risking breaking your teeth or choking on coins and rings in the barm brack. And the fierce concentration of trying to peel an apple in a single unbroken strip without breaking the skin of the apple or cutting your fingers. Happy times

Completely beside the point but I think swedes (turnips) were the original pumpkins. It was when it travelled to America they were replaced so maybe they were trying to be traditional! I used to love the old making costume dramatics!!

I forgot about a turnip!🤣

I don't think pumpkins were even available in the UK when I was a child. We used turnips (actually swedes) too in the South East of England. In year 6(top juniors then) we had to bring a kitchen knife and a turnip/swede to school to make one. Imagine telling kids to bring a knife to school nowadays.

The creepy turnips are way better. But so hard to carve. I havent managed to persuade my chikdren thst apple bobbing is a thing. Not just their odd mum invented it.

I grew up on a dairy farm situated up a long lane so we never had trick or treaters or the like.

However my Dad took great pleasure in selecting, designing and hollowing out a fodder beet from the fields each year.

He still does it now for my kids and it looks amazingly gruesome compared to the perfect pumpkins!

[quote Catsup]@Oysterbabe I think they just weren't a 'thing' in the UK, probably also really expensive. I had a US pen pal at the time too, and I can recall being in awe of the photo she sent me of her 'massive house', umpteen (3)carved pumpkins on the outside steps, and her awesome costume!... By contrast the sad little photo returned of me sporting my bin bag, and clutching my turnip after the garden twine holding the lid up had snapped? 🙄 Probably made me look like we lived under a rock and were yet to discover electricity. [/quote]
This is so funny, I can picture it exactly

This is a Halloween turnip lantern- dried, and evidence of burning inside, found in Ireland and from the 1700s.

Evidence of Halloween being an ancient European festival

@Catsup
TURNIPS !!

Turnips all the way for me, too.

I had an American friend who collected Hallowe'en ephemera, photographs..[Steve Chasmar]
He told me that my hollowing out dense Turnips was in fact the real and traditional way...
That Turnips and Hallowe'en originated with the Celts.

All power to the noble Turnip!

Sadly Steve died, but his photos are still floating around the net.

Eerie and freaky vintage photos of early Hallowe'en costumes.

The fodder beet are so tough he uses a power drill to 'carve' it. My 7year old thinks it’s brill.

Yes to turnips and bin bags! And mischief night, penny for the guy and indoor fireworks. A real treat was when the bin bag wasn't a witch, but a skeleton painted on with trainer whitener

@speakout

This is a Halloween turnip lantern- dried, and evidence of burning inside, found in Ireland and from the 1700s.

Evidence of Halloween being an ancient European festival

That is the freakiest thing.

Seen it before and it is born of Marshes, bogs and dark times.... A very creepy vegetable.

. We used turnips (actually swedes) too in the South East of England.

Some confusion- the large yellow fleshed vegetable is called a swede in most parts of England.
Here in Scotland we call it a turnip.
The smaller white/purple vegetable we call a swede or an "English turnip"

@RiceBubbless

We never got sweets either. Home grown apples, complete with bruises and worms and monkey nuts, or impossible to open brazil nuts. We kept them and gave them out the next year.

I was about to wail at the unfairness of it all and how we never got sweets when we knocked at doors - just monkey nuts and the occasional mandarin or a few grapes. But I see @RiceBubbless has already pointed this out.

I have fond memories of my Dad trying and failing to break the hard shelled nuts with a hammer - inevitably the nuts would go flying across the room or disappear under the sofa - to be discovered when we'd be doing the big pre-Christmas clean up. An experience we'd then repeat the following Hallowe'en. I don't know why we never invested in a nut cracker.

The fruit 'n veg shop would get in strange fruits you wouldn't see for the rest of the year - like toffee apples and wine apples. Many years later I discovered that pomegranates and wine apples are the same fruit - talk about mind blowing!

We never bothered with the whole trick thing though - I think that was more of a Scottish tradition. We'd just chant "Help the Hallowe'en party" and stick our plastic bags (and that's another gripe - no fancy 'Trick or Treat' bags or buckets back then) into the face of the disgruntled home owner.

Home made=Truly scary.

Carving a turnip is an absolute shitter of a job. Our poor parents. 😂

Was always puzzled by the selection of turnip/swede as vegetable of choice pre-Pumpkin nirvana. Let's rank vegetables by hardness then try and hollow the hardest one, closest in texture to concrete, using a spoon.

Speakout that neep head is creepy!!
Bringing back great (Scottish) Halloween memories here. I’ll never forget the year my mum made me an amazing domino costume out of a painted cardboard box (complete with obligatory wearing of black leotard/black tights underneath) for going out guising with my turnip lantern on a string. I think it used to be a birthday cake candle in the turnip, rather than a tea light. I never saw an actual pumpkin as a child. Dooking for apples, toffee apples in the shops which were so hard/chewy nearly inedible, preparing your party piece to be delivered in exchange for sweeties (usually a poem for me). Great times!!!

""I have fond memories of my Dad trying and failing to break the hard shelled nuts with a hammer - inevitably the nuts would go flying across the room or disappear under the sofa - to be discovered when we'd be doing the big pre-Christmas clean up. An experience we'd then repeat the following Hallowe'en. I don't know why we never invested in a nut cracker.""

Same! Our dad pinged nuts across the room.

One family had a huge rocking horse in their harness room, and crushed walnuts and other nuts under the big bow rockers.

It was an art to split the nut rather than send it exploding across the room.

Some confusion- the large yellow fleshed vegetable is called a swede in most parts of England.
Here in Scotland we call it a turnip.
The smaller white/purple vegetable we call a swede or an "English turnip"

That's really interesting. I've always called the yellow ones turnips and it wasn't until I was about thirty I realised I was 'wrong' and I'd assumed I had just learnt the wrong word! I feel vindicated.

The most annoying thing about these modern day Halloween's is that those enormous pumpkins are sold as 'carving pumpkins' and so are virtually inedible. At least the inside of a turnip can be made into something for dinner for the next week.

This is a great thread.

Bristol swede and bin bag girl checking in, it was me who had to scoop most of the horrible thing out with a spoon . Mum then went atnitnwith a knife.

Loads of children in our road and we did go tricking and treating.

Did you not alternate the witch costume with the ghostly sheet?

I mean we had choices people. It’s just that they came in Black & White.

We British and Irish are a tough Nation!
Turnips for us.

Cut fingers and bent spoons.

And stubs of household candle...No tea lights..

Americans and their easy to carve buttery stringy pumpkins... Don't know they're born!

🎃

I wasn't allowed to participate in Halloween growing up, but it was genuinely menacing where we lived - come 8 o' clock, groups of 16 year olds would hammer on the door and you risked potential damage to your house/car/gate by not answering. The costume of choice was to pull their sweatshirts over their heads (as 'a man with his head cut off').

Loved it when I moved to Scotland, and had processions of cute little kids supervised by their parents coming to the door, each with a very heavily rehearsed poem or joke.

Though one year I tried to carve a turnip to be traditional, and broke the best potato peeler we ever had.