Letter in the local paper!
Dec. 4th, 2008 02:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
daibhidcThe Inverness Courier published my response to a letter objecting to the St Andrew's Day party because it was a Sunday, and also complaining about the Hallowe'en party at Culloden Battlefield.
My letter aknowledges that the battlefield may be an inappropriate place for a Hallowe'en party, but questions the writer's characterisation of All Saint's Eve as "pagan"[1], before questioning the assumption that religious devotion and enjoying oneself are mutually incompatable, and pointing out that in the old days she refers to, not only did kids go guising and dooking for apples, but St Andrew's Day was celebrated by hunting.
(I would also have added, had I felt in a particularly sarcastic mood, that if she's worried, as she says, about Scotland becoming "a laughing stock", she might like to reflect on public reaction to the news that the Isle of Lewis was protesting against Sunday flights a few years ago. That's the sort of thing that makes us a laughing stock.)
[1]No offense intended to pagans; I'm not dismissing Samhain, just pointing out it's a different festival with similarities (suspicious similarities, perhaps, but that would have diluted my point).
My letter aknowledges that the battlefield may be an inappropriate place for a Hallowe'en party, but questions the writer's characterisation of All Saint's Eve as "pagan"[1], before questioning the assumption that religious devotion and enjoying oneself are mutually incompatable, and pointing out that in the old days she refers to, not only did kids go guising and dooking for apples, but St Andrew's Day was celebrated by hunting.
(I would also have added, had I felt in a particularly sarcastic mood, that if she's worried, as she says, about Scotland becoming "a laughing stock", she might like to reflect on public reaction to the news that the Isle of Lewis was protesting against Sunday flights a few years ago. That's the sort of thing that makes us a laughing stock.)
[1]No offense intended to pagans; I'm not dismissing Samhain, just pointing out it's a different festival with similarities (suspicious similarities, perhaps, but that would have diluted my point).
