Editor, The News:
While walking through many home department stores during the month of September, it is common to find a wide variety of Halloween decorations and costume pieces. Anything from inflatable pumpkins to authentic-looking portraits of the clown ‘It,’ Halloween products are completely unavoidable.
Yet, Halloween is not just a time of playing dress up, eating candies, and telling innocent ghost stories – it is a time in which our culture and society deliberately celebrates death, horror, and destruction.
And while there are many elements of Halloween that appear to be harmless, there is something to be said about the commemorating of death and physical terror.
In a world where a nuclear war is a fearsome thought, where radicals run through the streets of London, knifing everyone in their path, and families flee from their homes and countries in fear for their lives, commending such things is not only inappropriate, but a slap in the face to those who are living in less fortunate circumstances.
While the majority of individuals choose to disassociate the celebration of death from Halloween, it is a necessary association given the origins of the practice.
It is perhaps time to realize the potential dangers in hastily embracing, accepting, and commending these Halloween practices.
Regardless of any convictions or religious beliefs, it’s worth considering that Halloween is a likely hindrance to modern western civilization, and its principles. This issue is relevant considering the refugee crisis taking place at the moment. Millions of families who no longer feel safe and secure within their own borders are fleeing in hopes of a better life.
Where many of these refugees call home, severed limbs and dead bodies are not mere Halloween decorations one puts on their front lawn to entertain trick-or-treaters, they are a reality.
We, as a nation, have admirably chosen to welcome these refugees, yet we neglect to appreciate and sympathize with their current situations.
We pride ourselves on being a multicultural nation, yet we refuse to embrace the different cultures that now call this home.
The irony in this ought to be clear. By partaking in Halloween, but more specifically the aspects of it that pertain to the commemorating of death and bodily harm, we are refusing to appreciate the international crises currently taking place, which in turn is a refusal to recognize the progressiveness of our bureaucracy.
It is time we acknowledge the role our society plays on a global scale, and become more conscious of the traditions we choose to practice, and the celebrations that reflect our society.
Luca Di Prata
Pitt Meadows
Editor’s note: Luca Di Prata is currently a student of political science and philosophy at the University of British Columbia.