Halloween: When evil dresses itself up as fun

With Christmas only around the corner it may seem strange to reflect back on Halloween, but this year I as I traipsed round with my child on a grisly quest for sweets I found myself somewhat unsettled by aspects of the whole festival.

I am the first to admit Halloween was one the highlights of my year as a child growing up in rural Ireland. As the shock of finding ourselves back in school in September gave way to autumn leaves and the excitement of trick-or-treating, we got down to planning our costumes, with old clothes, cardboard, paint and glue. The usually clement weather almost guaranteed a clear, cool night — with a full moon if we were lucky. Even in decay, nature was a beautiful sight as silver-lined moonlit clouds drifted in dusky skies past half-bare branches dripping with dew. Trick-or-treating meant an hour’s trek round rural roads unlit apart from the odd sodium lamp here and there. Half the adventure was simply being out so late in the company of an older, supervising sibling. The sweets and few pence collected were a welcome boost in the lean

period before Christmas. Back home, we ate barmbrack whilst looking for the ring or were told rather formulaic ghost stories to torch-lit faces.

These days, even as childhood memories remain cherished, I find I have rather different feelings about the whole business. I suppose some might accuse me of suffering from that condition affecting many of us as we grow older: Which causes us to get

irritated by people doing the same things we once used to enjoy. Yet I believe there is more to my disquiet than mere ageing.

For a start, the horror factor of the costumes in my day was largely limited to the worst that could be conjured up by the imagination of your average 8 to 12-year-old armed with cardboard, glue and paint. Nowadays the shops seem filled to bursting with grisly items right off the prop shelves of an

18-rated horror movie. Some of them have disturbingly graphic or even

occult overtones, and the worst are openly unapologetic blasphemies of Christian themes — “sexy nuns” or

irreverent Jesus costumes.

When one takes an objective step back one perceives there is a distinctly disturbing common denominator of darkness to all this that goes beyond mere fun.

Part of the explanation may lie in the fact that so many adults have taken up a festival that was once largely the sole preserve of kids, which has

resulted in the injection of more adult themes to which kids are in turn

exposed when they participate as well. But it also seems a level of overt sinister darkness has crept into the celebration, that was absent in my youth.

It is somewhat ironic that a society which critiques religion — or at least, the Christian expression of it — and shoves it to the margins of public life, should so willingly embrace what is in essence, a pagan religious festival. Every year we are treated to public discourse from various atheist and secularist groups demanding we

remove Christian symbols from

the public sphere, de-Christianise Christmas, open the pubs on Good Friday, or condemning any public religion as an unacceptable expression of superstition.

Yet I have yet to see a single public comment from any of these tendentious groups asking Halloween be

exercised from our annual calendar, or the flood of vampires, ghouls, ghosts, demons and so on removed from our shop windows. And surely there is no greater expression of superstition than Halloween?

While in previous years we hadn’t given it too much thought, a spiritual renewal in our own lives found us facing some difficult decisions in relation to Halloween this year: To participate, or not?

On the one hand, it was a fun memory from my own childhood, but either the festival was tame back then or my

perception has changed — or both. And most parents want their children to share in the common cultural

experience of their peers and not feel left out.

On the other, sometimes we have to take a step back and ask, exactly what “common cultural experience” are we asking our children to share in, and is it to their good?

We found ourselves torn between

rejecting Halloween completely or allowing some limited participation when our young child evidently showed some interest, despite being rather scared by the whole business. This year we decided on a compromise — tone it down. A home-carved pumpkin constituted the sole decoration and an astronaut costume at least had no overtones of horror about it. At the outset my child clung to me half-afraid with the natural trepidation young children have when faced with all that is weird and horrible. By the time he returned home after some two dozen houses, he was in high spirits, clutching his bag of loot, some of the initial anxiety gone. I was already

beginning to regret I had caved in to participating at all.

As we traipsed around the impression began to settle on me ever more forcefully that what this festival achieves above all, is to desensitise our children to horror, darkness and all things occult. It is often said that evil is seductive. I couldn’t help thinking how appropriate a metaphor it was that on Halloween night, evil dresses itself up as fun and hands out sweets and treats to small children.

Nick Foley

Carrigaline

Cork

Need to get ages

20 to 34 on board

With multiple referenda scheduled to take place next year it is important

to highlight the fact that the census

figures released in April show that the population of 20 to 34-year-olds has dropped by 11.33% since 2011,

notably the only age group (apart from 0-4) to experience a reduction in population.

It is from this very demographic from which the Government have continued to pursue the return of emigrants, yet they disenfranchise them through a lack of Dáil representation and ineligibility to vote in referenda on issues which will have most impact on this group, namely reproductive rights in the upcoming set of referenda.

Offering a vote in the presidential election is merely a political smoke screen and offers no democratic representation in deciding legislative changes that have a real impact on their lives.

Indeed, this lack of representation acts as a deterrent to those who might otherwise wish to return.

Why has the government proposed merely symbolic voting rights for emigrant, rather than moving to substantially address the existing democratic deficit and provide representation for them in the Dáil and in referenda, like the majority of countries worldwide

already do for their emigrants?

Ciara Beades I request that my contact details not be shared, but I include them for verification purposes and I am happy to provide further clarification should it be required.

Ciara Beades

Clontarf

Dublin

Homeless, how

low can we go?

Ireland’s homeless crisis is not the worst in Europe. Is this the low our Government is settling for?

Eve Parnell

Schoolhouse Lane

Dublin 8

The not so sweet side of sugar

An article on the role of sugar in the immune system appeared in the Irish Examiner recently, juxtaposed with a photo of pouring sugar and a text

proclaiming the importance of sugar in the diet.

This is just egregious scientific nonsense. Everyone has sugar in his blood. The body makes it if you don’t eat it. Thus, sugar (in this case glucose) is completely unnecessary in the human diet, though eating a little of it is not harmful. What is killing the population is a glut of sugar in fizzy drinks, added to by most processed foods etc. In this case we are talking about sucrose or high-fructose

corn syrup which consists of a mixture of glucose and fructose. The body has a fairly limited capacity to deal with fructose and in calorie excess, which sugar drives, it is harmful, causing fatty liver, hypertension, obesity, etc. People should avoid processed food containing added sugar, should eat fruit, rather than drink juice, and should shun sugar-sweetened

beverages.

Dr Garry Lee

Bishopstown

Cork

‘Saint Bob’: Hand

back canonisation

So (Bob) Geldof has returned the

freedom of Dublin in protest at the treatment of Rohingya Muslims by the Myanmar government, lead by Aung San Suu Kyi, who holds the Freedon of Dublinkillersuu

kyi?

Does this mean that we can shortly expect ‘Saint Bob’ to hand back his honorary canonisation?

Liam Power

Dundalk

Co Louth

Taoiseach needs to go on a walkabout

On a cold dark evening last Sunday on O’Connell St, Dublin, to my shame I walked past an overly thin man squatting in clothes by an ATM that I had intended to use. Then in Abbey street while I was at another ATM I heard the voice of a man beg for €2 because he had missed a meal. I gave him some coins. I then crossed O’Connell Bridge only to hear a very young woman’s voice asking me for change.

To arrive in Dublin and meet three homeless or near homeless people to me seems to make Taoiseach Leo Varadkar’s words, that the number of homeless people in Ireland is less than what is generally thought, is totally inadequate and out of touch.

Seán O’Brien

Kilrush

Co Clare