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Catriona Thomson: I’d choose the mighty neep over a perfect pumpkin any Halloween

Did you carve turnip lanterns for Halloween as a child? (Photo: Colin Majury/Shutterstock)
Did you carve turnip lanterns for Halloween as a child? (Photo: Colin Majury/Shutterstock)

At this time of year, I remember the giddy excitement of childhood parties and dressing up for Halloween.

I grew up in the 1970s, which was a time when everything was a bit hand-knitted. Spooky ghost costumes were fashioned from old sheets, and handmade tails were secured to cat costumes with a safety pin.

It was also a time when you could dress up in your granny’s long-sleeved gloves, put on a sequinned top and belt out Shirley Bassey’s Big Spender at the top of your voice as your party trick.

My colleague even recalls one Halloween when she was dressed as a cigarette seller. All she had to do was collect a week’s worth of her mother’s empty fag packets and place them on a tray. So, I guess some homemade costumes are best left in the past.

It was also the decade when the film Grease premiered at the cinema. Young partygoers would don a pair of bright satin trousers or a denim jacket and strut their stuff like Olivia Newton-John or John Travolta. Singing: “You’re the one that I want” at the tops of their voices. When Star Wars landed in 1977, you saw legions of Luke Skywalkers or Darth Vaders, wielding kitchen roll tube lightsabers.

Members of the Cornhill Youth Club dookin’ for apples at their Halloween party in 1978 (Photo: DC Thomson)

At the fancy dress parties I went to, it didn’t matter what I wore, I would never win. As someone who is horrifically shy, my biggest fear was always taking part in dookin’ for apples or being asked to do a party piece. Sheer hell and, in both cases, I’d feel like I was drowning.

After extricating myself from a string full of treacle scones, I’d fade into the anonymity of the crowd of ruddy-faced youngsters, running amok in the Brownie hall – all on a sugar high from eating platefuls of marshmallow top hats and drinking gallons of diluting juice.

We’ve been converted to the pumpkin

In my day, the Halloween lantern was always fashioned from a humble turnip.
Pumpkins were a completely alien vegetable, something you saw only in films or on television. They certainly were not sold in our local supermarket.

In Scotland today, we have been totally converted to the American pumpkin. They’re easy to carve and light up the room with their cheerful, tangerine colouring

In our house, the homegrown neep would be carefully selected, and pulled out of the ground, with my father doing the lion’s share of the carving. Over a couple of nights, its innards would be removed with a Stanley knife, before my sister and I would be let loose to scrape the walls as thin as possible.

We’d bring it to life by stabbing out eyes, a nose and a spooky grin, then lighting the candle and closing the lid carefully, hoping its flame would not be snuffed out. A ghostly glow would emanate from the lantern that we carried proudly through the dark streets, hung on a handle made from string.

Pumpkin lanterns have replaced turnips in recent years (Photo: Ivan Kovalenko)

In Scotland today, we have been totally converted to the American pumpkin. They’re easy to carve and light up the room with their cheerful, tangerine colouring.

Still, the Halloween lantern’s ultimate purpose is to terrify evil spirits on All Hallows’ Eve, so I know which sturdy vegetable I’d choose to hold on a dark night to protect me from supernatural spirits.

The neep might be a bit ugly and knobbly, but what it lacks in good looks, it makes up for in endurance. It still lives on in the memories of people like me, who remember the unforgettable reek of a turnip lantern burning.

Has Halloween grown hollow?

I often wonder if we should have stuck with our trusty turnip, instead of rushing headlong into the proverbial pumpkin patch. I think, somewhere in the eighties, we swapped guising for trick-or-treating and consigned the neep to the past.

While it may be de rigueur to decorate your house with ghost and skeleton decorations or buy a family ticket to go pumpkin picking, it is not cheap to do so

Is Halloween now just a hollow celebration of excessive consumerism? I certainly thought so when I spied a supermarket’s own magazine editorialise on why shoppers should be supporting UK pumpkin growers, alongside their display of golden gourds imported from Greece.

Pumpkin patches have become common across Scotland during October (Photo: Kami Thomson/DC Thomson)

While it may be de rigueur to decorate your house with ghost and skeleton decorations or buy a family ticket to go pumpkin picking, it is not cheap to do so. Don’t forget the mortgage you’ll need in order to stock up on sweets for all the little trick-or-treaters that will come knocking at your door tonight, dressed in their immaculate, shop-bought costumes.

So, perhaps, this year we should hark back to the frugal times of the past. We should stay at home with our nearest and dearest, telling spooky tales around the turnip lantern.

At the same time, we can get our eyes accustomed to the gloom of life with the lights turned off. After all, there may soon be another trip down memory lane for me, when the cost of living bites, the winter power cuts begin, and we get a real taste of the seventies.


Catriona Thomson is a freelance food and drink writer

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