Halloween: Why the Devil is practically Glaswegian and I'm just about ready to accept pumpkins – Susan Morrison

There’s a pumpkin in the kitchen. It's huge. Both my husband and son are thrilled. They are going to carve into a massive jack o’ lantern to grin at the door.

Hallowe'en has returned from its spooky lockdown grave (Picture: Timothy A Clary/AFP via Getty Images)

I’m plotting to destroy it. I give it the full on witchy evil-eye when I walk past it. This pumpkin is an interloper on the Scottish Hallowe’en.

Everyone knows it should be a turnip. Yes, I fully appreciate that the neep is not the easiest of vegetables to carve. In fact, it's downright dangerous.

In days gone by, many a true Scots jack o’ lantern was decorated with real gore when the knife slipped and your dad’s hand got slashed. Well, ours did. Mum was raging, as I recall, because he’d used one of her best knives.

My pal Angela told me at school that if there was human blood on your turnip then Satan would come and steal your soul. I sat up till midnight waiting. He never showed.

The Devil clearly doesn’t care for raw neeps, no matter how blood stained. Not a fan of veg, Beelzebub. Makes him practically Glaswegian.

Oh, I suppose from a health and safety perspective, the pumpkin can stay.

I guess those concerns for well-being also lead to the abandonment of the traditional dookin’ for apples.

Yes, I’ll grant you, shoving kids heads underwater with their mouths open to bite an apple is possibly a tad dodgy, but on the plus side, it makes eating fruit a risky activity. Kids love that element of danger. It also washes their faces at the same time. Win win, really.

The costumes have been in the shops for weeks now. Kids demand more than an old bedsheet with holes cut out for eyes these days.

We didn’t have a white sheet one year, so mum re-purposed a Bri-Nylon one. As a result, my brother suffered constant static shocks and was the only candy-striped ghost out guising. Note, not ‘trick or treating’.

Whether its pumpkins, turnips, guising or trick or treat, it looks like Hallowe’en is rising from its lockdown grave and that’s something to be cheerful about.

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