Britain Embraces Halloween and Cashes In on Ghoulish Celebration

[MADem]

5. They're skirting the bounds of bad taste and outright stupidity in some instances.

It certainly ain't Shakespeare....any excuse for a drunken party, I suppose; and any opportunity to indulge in "fancy dress" (the phrase over the pond for "costume&quot is always fun....

Asda, a supermarket chain owned by Walmart Stores, and the grocery giant Tesco withdrew two costumes after complaints that they made light of mental illness. One of the costumes featured a mock meat cleaver and a fake-blood-stained straitjacket.

In Lancashire, a county in northwestern England, Scare Kingdom Scream Park was accused of simulating rape in one of its “scary entertainment” attractions, involving visitors who were strapped to a bed with a cushion held over their faces as a man with a sex toy threatened them.

What genius thought that one up? Could they have been more obtuse?

When I was a child, Halloween was an occasion for children. Parents didn't wear costumes and get drunk, they stayed home and handed out candy. There might have been one or two over-enthusiastic mothers (and it was always mothers, it seemed) who would decorate their houses to the max and maybe put on a witch outfit, but adults in costume were rare in the extreme.

You were expected to "mind" an older sibling as you ran from house to house with a grocery store double-bag brown paper bag or (clever kid) pillowcase collecting the (full-sized candy bar) goods. There were no plastic pumpkins or decorated "candy" bags.

Now, the adults seem to have appropriated this child's holiday, and many use it as a "warm up" for New Year's Eve...!