I was very concerned a few years ago, when the Halloween event on Chislehurst High Street doled out sweets galore to the child participants.

Having heard a recent BBC radio programme on Halloween in the USA, I appreciate that in my naïveté, I failed to understand that the whole point of it is to stuff children with sweets.

Haribo, the international non-chocolate confectionary monopoly, must make millions from it.  All supermarkets have been selling jumbo-size tins of Haribo diabetes and tooth decay for weeks.

In parts of the USA, schools close on the day after Halloween, because all the kids are hyper-active, suffering from sugar overload.

Parents have been buying ready-made devil, witch, skeleton, spider and Dracula costumes which will be worn just once, because the loved one will have out-grown it by next year.

 

You can now buy greetings cards, wishing you “Happy Halloween”.

The problem is that this is all-hallows eve, as the Mexicans call it: The Day of the Dead.

 

It is ironic that the USA, the biggest church-attending people in the western world, turns a religious festival  into a money-making spree. Ironic, but not at all surprising.

 

So, here’s wishing you a very happy Day of the Dead.

Stuff our overweight kids with even more sugar than usual.

Like Black Friday  – the last Friday before Christmas, when we are all supposed to max-out our credit cards on shopping, Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, when we should send expensive cards and book the best restaurants, Halloween is an American import we can do without.

I am not against celebrations. In October or November, why not celebrate the significance of autumn for the natural world: the natural harvest of blackberries, sloes, acorns, beech mast, hazel nuts and leaf-fall, which is the trees re-cycling the bounty of the summer. Let’s help children to get close to nature, rather than dental caries and obesity.