Halloween, which happens tomorrow, originates in a mishmash of strange and deathly traditions gleaned mostly from Latin America. However much credence you may or may not give these spooky legends, it is also the traditional time to tell ghost stories.
Being a believer in tradition of the fun and harmless variety, here’s my ghost story. Like the best ghost stories it is based on truth, in this case a trip I took to visit a friend in New York City exactly four years ago:
“Twas October 2016 and in Brooklyn the brown leaves had fallen. The snow fell early too. Commuters shivered uneasily in the ghastly chill. Strange voices whispered of bad omens in the wind but no right-thinking citizen heeded their warnings as they blithely went about their business.
Now that orange is the new red, it may as well also be the season for off-colour jokes.
“Orange pumpkins with evil grinning mouths and pulpy empty skulls were ranged around every doorway, but the walkers did not notice them. They were there every year. They were there to ward off evil spirits. Despite the cold and the malodorous vapours, in the heart of every hopeful human a bluebird sang brightly: ‘Hillary will win!’”
As we all know now, things did not happen the way they were supposed to. The apprentice pumpkins did not do their job. Instead of sending one-night-demons packing, as they were supposed to do before being thrown on the rubbish dump after fulfilling their duty, the pumpkins banded together and made one of their own a king.
Hillary did not win. The bluebird cried as the night wore on with no sign of dawn on the horizon. Hope faded like the ghost of Halloweens past.
The hollowed-out orange skull took up residence in the Oval Office in Washington DC and brought seven circles of hell down on the founding mothers of America, violating human rights and grabbing women’s genitals.
Four dry, lean and dusty years passed, and then the season of falling leaves and electoral ballots returned.
With eyes still streaming from the all-consuming flames, and throats still clogged with bitter ashes from the 2016 bonfire, few dare speak aloud the hope that on Tuesday a freshly hatched bird might ring in the dawn with a new and hopeful song.
If this happens, there will be many dozens of dumpsters to be filled with rotten pumpkin flesh until the streets are swept clean again. But the bluebird might yet be heard.
Ole orangehead used to be a member of the blue party, incidentally, but when the red ones gave him more money he quickly switched allegiances.
No shame in that. It’s a free world, or at least it will have a better chance of being one if the pumpkin does not fight to see another day.
Speaking of pumpkins, the word “pumpkin” entered English in the 17th century as an amusing bastardisation of the earlier “pumpion”, which itself had been colonised from the French “pompon”, meaning a melon.
You might not think that pumpkins and melons have much in common but they do both grow on vines. Trump likes to wear one on his head while his paramours wear theirs on their chests.
Going back a bit further, all versions of melons and pumpkins come from the Greek pepon, which literally meant “cooked by the sun”. In Trump’s case we could probably just say “cooked”.
In 1781 the Americans came up with the term “pumpkin-head” which at first referred to a person whose hair was cut short all the way around his head (my gran would have called this a pudding-bowl haircut) but later extended its interpretation to a person woefully short on brains.
If you’ve watched any of the orange idiot’s press interviews lately, you will know that this Halloween is not just the season of ghosts but the season of inane insults.
Which makes me think, particularly now that orange is the new red, that it may as well also be the season for off-colour jokes. I heard this one in the US on that fateful Halloween four years ago:
Question: What do rednecks do at Halloween?
Answer: Pump kin.
Trump supporters may not forgive me for this lapse in taste, but I’m hoping the rest of you will share a guilty giggle with me. Let us also hope that the next four years will not be another ghost-train ride for the freethinking world.
