Len Hanley: People who celebrate Halloween glorify, support violence and death

To The Daily Sun,

The lack of news stories on those who don't celebrate or participate in Halloween, and the ad nauseam ads, promotions, product incorporations, products overtaking stores, etc., clearly shows how people who do celebrate and participate enjoy a bias in their favor.

In fact, two years ago on Oct. 12, 2020, a Halloween letter of mine was responded to with another published letter that was rudely and disrespectfully written. Yet the policy states that "Letters should ... be respectful in tone, avoid personal attacks." Do people even consider if the person you talk to about Halloween celebrates or participates in it?

If you do celebrate Halloween, you must consider that retailers see you as just a programmable ATM machine, and they use tricks to get you to not only spend more on Halloween but use the established narrative story so you spend money to begin with.

Children can't watch the movie "Friday the 13th," but can participate in a holiday where they are celebrating fear, violence, death and horror, which Halloween glorifies. It's in 95% of all the things associated with it. 

There are many dangers involved as can be seen by all the warnings on the news, like costumes catching fire and impatient drivers, kids not looking both ways, etc. It's also at night instead of the daytime. There are Halloween ads for alcoholic beverages and parties every year, yet drunken driver deaths peak on Halloween. There are also convicted pedophiles using Halloween to their advantage.

It may be fun, but it's far from harmless, no matter how many precautions you may take. A holiday is for praising or extolling something by definition, so no matter how you participate in it, you are praising all of it by celebrating it, and therefore saying you find it acceptable to do so.

Len Hanley

Barnstead