Mary KennyMary Kenny reflects on the growing popularity of the ‘ghoulish’ and ‘macabre’ festival
We’re inclined to grumble that Christmas grows more ‘commercial’ every year, and it probably does (the first Christmas decorations appeared in Harrods in London in August). And in recent times, Hallowe’en too seems to have undergone a progressive expansion of marketing and merchandising. I notice the shops – particularly those budget stores where you get all kinds of bargain goods – now awash with ghoulish and macabre Hallowe’en outfits and accessories.
Grinning skulls are all the rage. Skeleton costumes are ubiquitous. Fake tombstones, constructed in cardboard, can be acquired. Witches’ broomsticks and wizards’ wands are accompanied by spectral images and symbols marked with an RIP.
Is our old Celtic Hallowe’en morphing into a kind of Mexican ‘Day of the Dead’?
The emphasis on death images is a noticeable Hallowe’en trend: the grinning skull, once associated with the pirates’ flag, is now a fashion statement.
It’s all very different from the simple Hallowe’en apple-and-nuts festivities in my childhood: but that’s to be expected. Social habits change.
And I wonder if the death-themes of contemporary Hallowe’en are an unconscious attempt to recapture the spirit of the Feast of All Souls, on November 2, when Christians across Continental Europe remember and pray for the dead.
Some of the Hallowe’en merchandising is excessive, and parents probably spend more than they mean to on Hallowe’en costumes and accessories for the kids; yet there’s something serious and reflective, too, about dressing up as a skeleton for a party.
Irish Sisters pioneered hospice care in Britain
According to a study carried out by the Economist Intelligence Unit, Britain leads the world – in a survey of 80 countries – in end-of-life palliative care.
That’s excellent, and in no small measure due to the pioneering hospice work established by the Irish Sisters of Charity in the East End of London in the early 1900s.
Five Irish religious sisters opened their care centre in Mare Street, in Stepney, in 1900, and started their hospice in 1905. Let us honour them by remembering their names: Winefred Sugrue, Mary Sabas O’Connor, Mary Duffy, Catherine O’Flynn and Agnes Aloysius Martin. They were supported in their endeavours by the fundraising energies of a Jesuit priest, Fr Peter Gallwey.
When Dame Cicely Saunders, the Anglican physician and nurse, founded the modern British hospice movement she said she was inspired by the leadership of the Irish Sisters of Charity.
Surely these Irishwomen should be awarded some kind of retrospective national honour?
The House of Commons debated a euthanasia (or ‘assisted dying’) bill last month and decisively voted against it, after an intelligent debate in which all political parties allowed freedom of conscience. The hospice movement has played a central – and influential – role in advancing good medical care and pain relief for those approaching the end of their lives.
Media only interested in ‘sexy’ side of story
The Irish Women’s Liberation Movement (IWLM), of which I was a founder member in 1970, is somewhat in the news at the present time because there’s a musical entertainment based on a famous stunt to abrogate the 1935 law against importing contraceptives. The media loves this story because it’s ‘sexy’ (in both a literal and a figurative sense).
But be it noted that the IWLM did have other campaigning objectives too, which are less often mentioned, since they are not quite so ‘sexy’. One of them was the problem of housing and families not being able to afford homes. Mairin de Burca was particularly impressive in campaigning about homelessness.
So what’s the situation of homelessness today? All solved? Done and dusted? Everyone happy? I don’t think so. But nobody is going to write a musical entertainment about that subject, expecting a standing ovation.