Has Halloween become more complicated than it needs to be?

Having trawled the supermarkets at the weekend, I can report with some horror that Halloween costumes for a nine-year-old now seem to cost the GDP of a small country. I was looking for something for Cyrus and trying to find anything under £10 felt like searching for gold.

Of course, he’ll probably wear it once any way, then it will end up in the back of a cupboard or on Vinted. Which made me wonder whether the problem was really the price of the costume, or whether Halloween itself had somehow become another occasion where parents are expected to spend, plan and perform yet again.

I don’t remember Halloween feeling like that when I was little.

And if it has, what have we actually GAINED by making it bigger, more expensive and more elaborate?

We didn’t have rows of ready-made costumes or a choice of 20 different versions of the same pumpkin. We just had our sturdy turnip.

I can still remember my dad having to carve the bloody thing. A pumpkin is designed for carving. A turnip is not. It was hard, awkward and needed a lot more parental patience than any Halloween activity should. And there was a lot more gauging out than you might imagine. Dad had to hack away at the inside of this stubborn little root vegetable to create enough room for a candle, while simultaneously trying not to take his fingers off. It was hardly a five-minute job. Somehow he would hollow it out, carve a face into it and then try to work out how to get a candle inside without setting the whole thing on fire.

Then came the string. Dad would make holes in either side and thread string through so I could carry my turnip lantern around. Which meant that I, as a small child, was wandering around outside with a live flame inside a hollowed-out root vegetable dangling from my hand. There was not quite as much health and safety back then.

And the smell? If you’ve never experienced a burning turnip, consider yourself lucky. It gives off a particularly pungent combination of singed vegetable and something vaguely resembling a bonfire in a kitchen bin.

I remember the Halloween competitions at my primary school, because there was always one parent who took it very seriously, and one year a mum went to extraordinary lengths to turn her son into a mummy. She wrapped him in crepe bandages and then covered him in a mixture of wet flour and water to create the impression of old, grimy bandages. It worked a treat.

He looked genuinely terrifying, and I remember him winning the competition for best dressed. I was impressed, although I suspect his mum deserved the prize as much as he did.

Which brings me on to my own costume. What did I go as? A Scottish Highlander of course. To this day, I have absolutely no idea why.

My mum dressed me in a tartan sash and, looking back, I think she may simply have given up on the whole Halloween theme. While one child was wandering around covered in homemade gloop, I was apparently representing the Highlands. I don’t remember being upset about it thought and I don’t remember thinking I needed a better costume, I was actually delighted with my tartan kit. I certainly don’t remember asking for something from a shop.

My memories were that I remember the turnip, the mummy boy and my tartan sash. And those are the things that have stayed with me.

And that is what came back to me while I was standing in the supermarket looking at £10, £12 and £15 costumes for Cyrus.

Memories of my dad wrestling with a turnip in the kitchen and another parent turning her child into a genuinely convincing corpse, Halloween seems to have become rather more complicated. I’m not convinced the answer is that everything was better when we were children. I’m not against buying costumes. If Cyrus desperately wants to be something specific and it makes him happy, then that’s what we’ll do. I think most of us are just trying to get through modern parenting without adding another job to the list.

So when Halloween arrives with costumes, decorations, pumpkins, themed food, parties and enough sweets to keep a small village awake until Christmas, buying something ready-made can feel like the easiest option. But the question is whether we’ve started believing that buying more, doing more and making everything look more impressive somehow makes the experience better. Or does it just take the fun out things?

That is where I became interested in the idea of making a Halloween costume in five minutes, rather than automatically buying one.

I came across these ideas from Playdale, specialists in children’s playground equipment for schools and nurseries. They’re simple, inexpensive and, importantly, most can be made using things you may already have at home.

That appealed to me because it turns the question around. Instead of asking, “What costume should I buy?”, we’re asking, “What can I make with what I’ve already got?”

If you’re attempting one of these costumes at the last minute, I think the rules should be fairly simple.

Look at what you already have before buying anything. Reuse old costumes and accessories if they still fit. Raid the recycling box for cardboard and paper. Keep the face paint simple.

And don’t aim for perfection. The whole point is to make something, not produce a professional costume department.

When I think back to my own childhood, the costumes I remember are the ones that had a story attached to them.

I think it probably has.

Of course, I don’t think we should all return to hollowed-out turnips and small children wandering around with live flames dangling from pieces of string. But I think we’ve started to confuse effort with enjoyment and expense with experience.

Halloween doesn’t need to be perfect or look like a film set, and it doesn’t need to become another parenting exercise in getting everything right.

Sometimes a cardboard box is enough, an old dress is enough, five minutes of creativity is enough. And a tartan sash is enough to turn a child into a Scottish Highlander for reasons none of my family can subsequently explain.

What was Halloween like when you were growing up?

Did you make your own costumes, carve pumpkins or, like me, carry a slightly alarming turnip around the neighbourhood with a live candle inside it?

And do you think we’ve made children’s celebrations more complicated than they need to be?

Occasional stories, experiments, discoveries and rabbit holes from Saffron & Cyrus.