Celebrating Halloween in the UK

by Nicole Clendinning

The fall is a busy time in the UK. Although
Thanksgiving celebrations have not made their way across the pond, there are
many other celebratory occasions taking place from October to January. As most
universities start the school year at the end of September, it is normal for
these weeks to be filled with beginning of the year events referred to as
‘Freshers’, which is the UK equivalent to ‘Frosh’ events. Once these events
subside, it will still be a few weeks before Halloween season commences.

While in Canada October is often filled with
visits to pumpkin patches, apple orchards, or haunted houses it is quite
different in London. The Halloween season is celebrated here in a much more
commercial sense. Many restaurants and businesses will tune into the spooky
season by offering Halloween themed events or products in tune with the season,
but what’s  missing is the scary movie
marathons and the sense of the Halloween season you get from seeing decorated
houses scattered around. You will without a doubt see people dressed in costume
headed for a night out, but trick or treaters were much fewer and more far
between than I expected. While in Canada you are guaranteed to see costumed
children out in droves on October 31^st, I saw only a few groups
throughout the night. A vast difference from my Halloween experiences in
Canada, I also noticed a significant lack of decorations in houses and around
the neighborhood. Similar to Canada, they operate on the Jack-O-Lantern rule,
where if a house is participating by handing out candy, they will have a carved
pumpkin outside the house to communicate this to families, however I noticed a
significant lack of festive houses around South London.

But Halloween lovers, don’t fear! There are
definitely still opportunities to dress up and celebrate! As I mentioned, the
biggest Halloween events here are centered around nightlife and this year I
observed people celebrating Halloween by dressing up in costume for almost a
full week. As London is such a vibrant city, people will tend to go on a night
out any day of the week. This year Halloween fell on a Thursday allowing people
to celebrate ‘hallo-weekend’ on the weekend before as well as the weekend
following October 31^st. As opposed to the popup Halloween shops
commonly found in temporary spaces in Canada, Fancy-dress shops sell a variety
of costumes all year round. It is common for society events, sports teams and
parties to be themed, requiring ‘fancy dress’ which refers to costumes.

Ireland and Scotland have bigger Halloween festivities.
The city of Derry in Northern Ireland holds a four-day-long Halloween event
called The Banks of the Foyle Carnival which include a parade and haunted
houses! It is common in Northern Ireland and Scotland to carve turnips as
opposed to Pumpkins! As the origins of Halloween are rooted in Pagan
celebrations from Ireland, Scotland and Wales, the tradition of carving
pumpkins stems from people’s difficulty in finding turnips after migrating to
the Americas.

Interestingly, the UK has another holiday
that is more widely celebrated than Halloween. Guy Fawkes Day (or ‘Bonfire
Night’) is quite widely celebrated on November 5^th and often the
weekend before. This holiday commemorates a failed attempt to blow up
Parliament buildings in 1605 and it is now celebrated at the beginning of the
winter season with massive amounts of fireworks, bonfires and in some areas,
parades. Often Guy Fawkes Day lands around one of the first times it starts to
get significantly cold, so families and friends bundle up in their winter
accessories and bring hot drinks out to watch the firework shows or attend a
bonfire outside. This year celebrations shared the first weekend of November
with Halloween and resumed on Tuesday the 5^th with fireworks through
the night.

If you would like to
find out more about studying in the UK, please contact one of our advisors