On Halloween
I suspect that for most people who emigrate to the west, the whole concept of Halloween is initially shocking. Personally, the image of a group of young women dressed in skeleton costumes and rowing a boat down River Wensum in Norwich at sunset was both jarring and now permanently engraved on my mind. However the longer one stays here, surrounded by neighbours who have carved pumpkins at their doorsteps and skeletons on the front garden then the question of what attitude one ought to have about Halloween becomes a little more than just a theoretical issue. Generally most of us will fall almost neatly into three groups. Firstly, there are those who don’t really care either way. We are so busy with major life issues— paying bills, school runs, et cetera that we don’t have the time or the emotional bandwidth for such inanities. There is the second group that are generally liberal about such issues. They don’t see any real problem with children dressing up and having some fun. The third gr...