Codes

I love the costumes at Halloween. Enlivened by gore-spattered limbs and ghastly faces the tat drops away, giving place to other-worldliness, creativity and transformation. Dropping off my son at the school Halloween disco I was awed by the artistry of the delicate Dia de los Muertos design on a beautiful clown in a wig of multicoloured curls.

For the children, the main event of Halloween is trick-or-treating. Their enthusiasm never wanes. No matter his confidence and desire for independence I don’t care to leave my now nine-year-old, of still unpredictable road sense, wandering about, in a dark costume, his mind on treats, with heedless drivers blitzing down residential streets. So for years I too have trudged these hilly streets in the dark, the cold, the dreich and once in an icy downpour. Nothing though deters the children. Next to Christmas, Halloween is best. It is the dressing up, the friends, the promise of sweets with the delicious uncertainty of what and when and where and how much and what kind of reception from these strangers we visit.

Each lit house has its own message. One has gone to town: the whole front festooned with spider web and danger cordon, bugs, rats, goo and gore. Another transforms its lawn into a graveyard through which the children pick their way, past a skeleton with arms and legs protruding from the ground. Some will have only a jack-a-lantern outside. Another just a milk bottle with a tealight balanced on a gatepost. But this part of the game - spotting the signal, finding the one welcoming house in an otherwise darkened street. Later, walking back we remember the best one: the man with the neat house and garden, the decorations and the welcoming stained glass around the door. But it was the man himself who made it memorable: how, after the knock at the door and the werewolf howl, a clawed hand poked itself alarmingly outwards through the letterbox towards the five poised children. The man groaned loudly at the dreadful jokes, and despite the late hour on a weeknight, play-acted his way into the spirit of it all.

This year I enjoyed the silent codes around Halloween, of what to do and what not, codes figured out, passed around, passed on, tried out, explained to little ones or people who have never been before. Mistakes were made, laughed at in company and learned from. It was so natural, so human, such an antidote to our often overly-analytical, political, defensive, hide-bound, society.

It started before we went out. Social codes start in the home. My boy’s friend and his mother came for tea. These codes are even in the way we set the table, how we wait for each other to be ready to eat, the way our young visitor brought a gift and said, so politely, how good the simple food smelled, enquired what it was and where I had found the idea, said how much he was looking forward to it and offered his compliments at the table. The delightful manners of this child, and his straightforward, open, honest face means he will always be welcome. These are a sort of code; partly taught, shown, demonstrated by example to children by parents and family and partly just understood. They are the codes by which we identify others with whom we will or will not likely be socially compatible. To learn them and make them one's own requires awareness and confidence and trust. Equipping ourselves with them shows our development. To compliment a host is a time-hounoured way of showing appreciation of the effort to welcome a guest in the home. It demonstrates awareness and gratitude, social skills of a high order. It is a sort of ritual around which we hang our conversation, a trellis upon which our friendships grow.

Sometimes there may not quite be parity in our codes. Thirty years ago I learnt in France that hot chocolate may be drunk from bowls in the morning, that young friends even accompanied by parents and family may go topless at each other's swimming pools and that many homes will not use side plates for bread. If, in youth, one imports a foreign custom and make it one’s own one may, later in life, unthinkingly faze guests. There may follow silent clamour to calm our host or guest’s embarrassment, restore the momentarily broken ritual. More simply there may just be quiet adaptation and a memory, carefully filed. Such moments test our resourcefulness and grace.

So the children put on their costumes and try out their jokes on one another. The notion of trying to trick or treat without a joke to share is so obviously unsuitable it doesn't even arise. It is part of the very definition of the activity. This apart, the main code is so simple even pre-schoolers pick it up: only knock at decorated houses. What then does it mean if a house is decorated but dark? Or lit and decorated but doesn’t reply? Must we adapt our reasoning if a rival group tells us they have been cruelly sabotaging lanterns? If we are too late the hosts may be having their tea or have gone to bed, or had enough or run out of sweets.

“How often do we knock?” asks one.

“Once of course, only ever once” replies another.

“How many sweets can we take?”

“One unless offered more”.

“But Henry took three and the rest of us only got one”.

“She offered me three so it was OK!” says the straggler.

“No we can’t knock now. It’s too late” urges a ghost of pre-teen height.

Through the unwritten rules we learn we enjoy free interaction between stranger child and stranger adult, a concept otherwise almost unheard-of today. We learn that different rules apply in different contexts, the constraints here: symbols, company, costume, exchange and timing. Thus through fun, pleasure, enjoyment and reward and while hardly realising it, we learn implicitly social lessons of independence, observation, confidence, safety, mechanisms of exchange, negotiation, respect, gratitude. Social learning: long may it live.