Irish Teacher: Modern Halloween is a ghost of its former self

"Thankfully, I find myself on a strange little outcrop, teaching English literature, one place where death remains front and centre."

Have we lost our connection to nature and the old traditions of Samhain? 

IT’S ALMOST Halloween: the pooka is busy preparing; the Cailleach is fine-tuning her cackle; the sprites are setting up for their few hours of release. Samhain. A night when the veil is lifted between the living and the dead, when the border between two worlds thins, melts and fizzes.

It’s my favourite time of year and the message of Samhain is one I invite into my classroom. How? By talking about death in an open and accepting way, just as our ancestors did.