Do you celebrate Halloween or Bonfire Night?

I won’t celebrate Halloween or Bonfire Night, but I don’t mind other people doing it. What bothers me far more and incenses me every year is Christmas paraphernalia appearing in the shops before Halloween’s even been! (Similarly, I saw the first poppy being worn today on telly and we’re not even in November yet. Is this a competition? Looks like a travesty to me.)

I would like to see preferably a law, but if not, self-imposed regulation like they have in Belgium as I understand, stipulating that there should be no Christmas advertising or displaying of goods before 1st December, no Easter eggs out 6 weeks before Easter and so on. Never mind retailers’ greed (or desperation in this difficult economic period) and unseemly consumption on our part, time passes by far too quickly without rushing it further along. May we enjoy the here and now please?

I don’t think much of the Hallowe’en hoo-hah. We find the trick-or-treaters extremely bothersome as it seems to go on all night. I don’t see why British people should be gadding about in tacky outfits – made in the Orient no doubt – in the hope of getting a few sweeties or else they’ll throw an egg at your door [which has happened to us] – not a good moral example. The same lot come back six weeks later and pretend to sing Christmas carols. I suppose to the extent that the boom in pumpkin sales boosts the Norfolk economy I should soften my line. We like Guy Fawkes Night [as it should be called] and enjoy the private and public firework displays; at least it marks a key event in English history although the reports of the shells seem to be getting louder and more numerous as the years go by.

Hallowe’en is a home-grown celebration and, as we used to celebrate it, is great fun for children and for grown-ups who never grew up properly.

As children we went guising, in other words dressed up in fancy dress and went about in gangs. I still occasionally get a bunch of children guising here. They ring the bell and offer an entertainment, so I invite them in and they sing a song or tell jokes, and I reward them with fruit and (if they’re old enough) nuts. Never money or sweets. This is harmless fun and I am happy to encourage it.

We also enjoyed the traditional ducking for apples, trying to eat treacle scones off a string without using hands (real scones covered in proper black treacle, not Golden Syrup) and various other messy games.

I agree entirely about the undesirability of the American version of Hallowe’en, specifically ‘Trick or Treat’, which reminds me, I need to arrange to go out for dinner on Wednesday evening.

I love fireworks, and always try to go to as many formal firework displays as possible, and I object strongly to killjoys who try to stop such events because their pets are frightened. If you know there’s going to be a display near you, you can easily make an arrangement to keep them indoors, or take them away somewhere out of range for an hour or so. I like the fact that firework displays are not all held on the same day, which means I can go to more than one each autumn.

On the other hand, I agree about letting bangers off randomly, and would be happy to see a ban on sales of noisy fireworks to the general public. One decent big firework costs from around £20 to £30. If everyone donated that much to a formal display, there would be more for all to enjoy, and it would be safer.