First of all, I couldn’t resist using a picture of my namesake from the Mario games as an image to accompany this post. Â I give you Big Boo!
Anyway, I’ve nothing to go on here except for my memory, but I reckon it was sometime during the 1980’s when the concept of Trick or Treat at Halloween (or more correctly Hallowe’en) made it’s way over to the UK. Â Halloween was never really celebrated much in old blighty before then, other than perhaps having a scary movie on TV and parents telling children scary stories about witches and monsters being out at night.
I certainly never went Trick or Treating as a child and I don’t remember any other kids knocking on the front door either during my younger years. Â However, I do also remember this changing one year when I must have been around ten. Â At school we had been allowed to make Halloween costumes out of black plastic bin liners, and I remember desperately wanting to go out and knock on doors for sweets. Â My parents wouldn’t let me though, and I remember my Dad telling me to go out into the back garden and wave my magic wand a bit to frighten off any ghosts or ghouls that might be about. Â I did this, but soon gave up when the blackness of the garden and the strange sounds of night sent be back indoors with a tingle down my spine (what a coward!).