Quarantine and Halloween?

I am not an avid fiesta fan but I must admit that these festivals seem to come around more often these days than they did a few years ago. I enjoy the Moors and Christians do's, love the costumes and thoroughly appreciate the fact that the Spanish certainly do like to let their hair down. That these celebrations are purely Spanish makes them all the more enjoyable and interesting to us foreigners.

However, fiestas can go a bit over the top at some levels. For folks on the Costa Blanca to celebrate the British Guy

Fawkes Day with bonfires seems a bit off course and even more weirdly take a day off for the Celtic festival of Samhain, which dates back to ancient medieval times when bogey men and dark spirits of the dead were castigated and banished on All Hallows’ Eve.

I got a bit fancy dress agonised by this, particularly when I nipped into my local groceries shop and found myself being assaulted by a little lad decked out in devilish garb and waving a rather lethal looking weapon.

After the small, fierce devil and his not very witchlike ‘ madre’ had departed I played dumb. I enquired what the satanic outfit was all about. “It’s for Halloween” I was told… and “Don’t you celebrate All Hallows’ Eve in England?” I left it at that.

I admit I did have some knowledge of Halloween but it was never celebrated in my part of the UK. Later, I did a bit of research on it and discovered that a pagan festival and a Christian one fell within a couple of days of each other so some smart cleric with an eye to business decided to amalgamate them.

That Americans decided to make a big thing of Halloween was something else. It could be they were fancy dress fans and recently big business took a hand and even came up with QuarantineOWeen suggestions on how to stop the pandemic ruining the kids’ – already ghoulish – fun.

Get this; they came up with the idea of sticking fake tombstones around your urbanisation and sealing ‘ trick or treat’ toffee and chocolate packets.

Get your computer into the act too. They don’t miss a trick! You can download Halloween printable props backgrounds if your ladies’ group is having a devilish All Hallows’ Eve party.

And on the virus safety side, find a remote spot away from your own homes to cut and carve your pumpkins… and read aloud scary tales to each other in a Hercule Poirot phoney French voice.

Whatever this set of guidelines is supposed to do, to keep coronavirus at a distance, I’m damned if I know.

What I am quite sure of is the shops and stores which have been having a rough time with the pandemic might get a few euros back with sales of Halloween gewgaws, costumes, sticky sweets, toys and Elastoplasts.

So enjoy your mask party.