You might think the festival that is all about a plot to blow up parliament would be a surefire hit in an autumn steeped in backstabbing and skulduggery at Westminster, but Bonfire Night lost the pop cultural arms race to Halloween years ago. Halloween is huge. What was once a cobwebby half-term afterthought has reinvented itself. Olde-world graveyards and broomsticks have been ditched in favour of Instagrammable nail art and carefully curated pumpkin stalls.
There are lots of reasons why Halloween is a really bad idea. It is the demon enabler of the evil sugar industry. It is an environmental disaster zone of disposable plastic tat – the charity Hubbub recently estimated that throwaway costumes and accessories generate polluting oil-based plastic equivalent to 83m plastic bottles. And, if that wasn’t bad enough, every year it completely spoils an entire week of Strictly Come Dancing with green body paint and coloured contact lenses. Yet, in the end, none of this matters, because Halloween is supposed to be nasty. The worse it gets, the better. Deal with it, because it is not going away.
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