Dear LPG

I want to share a few words on the subject of Halloween.   While I know that shops and the internet companies will use any excuse to keep the public interested in what they have to offer, I feel that this particular annual festival fills a void in their calendar that we can learn too much about when we are too young.

Apparently the original point of the event was supposed to give people an opportunity to keep ghosts and the like away from their world, but it appears to have become a celebration of all things ghoulish and macabre over the years.  I hope that I am not the only person in Lewisham who feels that just seeing the alarming reminders in our shops so many weeks before the big day, where really young children’s costumes and quite grotesque props are available for them to see, is quite worrying. 

 I understand and know that we all need something other than reality to make our lives interesting, regardless of age, but I worry about introducing little ones to this sort of thing.    

It was bad enough when it was only remembered once a year but now there is so much fictional drama on television and in the cinema surrounding ghosts and ghouls that our grandchildren are exposed to it all year round and like so many other genre of really negative drama the regularity with which the subject is featured for even small children can only help to traumatise and influence them in a really worrying way.

 As great-grandparents, grandparents, grandaunts and uncles we are in a position to talk to the little one’s parents and help the young children themselves to avoid this celebration or at least play it down a little during their really young lives. We all know that it is what they learn when they are really young that shapes the future.

I truly believe that there are many better ways to escape reality than this supposedly fun event that has such dark undertones, when children are at their most impressionable, and that we can all help in a positive way here.

LG, Brockley,

LPG found a few related articles that may be of interest.

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