Here's a nice little question for Halloween. What do you think happens to us after we die? Oblivion? A reunion with friends? Fluffy clouds, harps and angel wings? Possibly starting all over again, somewhere else? Your answer (if you have one) could affect the way you approach Halloween.
The festival's changed a lot since I was a kid. Yes, I remember bobbing for apples, but the pumpkin-and-dressing-up business only drifted over here from the USA when I was a teenager. (Blame Stephen Spielberg's 1982 film ET. Lots of British children saw the trick-or-treating going on there and said, 'I want some of that.' Thanks, Stephen. Kindly trip over your Oscar.) But the skeletons and gravestones and Things That Go Bump in the Night are all playing with our fears of the grave, the supernatural and other things we can't control. And that brings us back to the big question that we don't like to talk about. What happens to us after we die?
The festival's changed a lot since I was a kid. Yes, I remember bobbing for apples, but the pumpkin-and-dressing-up business only drifted over here from the USA when I was a teenager. (Blame Stephen Spielberg's 1982 film ET. Lots of British children saw the trick-or-treating going on there and said, 'I want some of that.' Thanks, Stephen. Kindly trip over your Oscar.) But the skeletons and gravestones and Things That Go Bump in the Night are all playing with our fears of the grave, the supernatural and other things we can't control. And that brings us back to the big question that we don't like to talk about. What happens to us after we die?
