Catriona, my 11-year-old daughter, wants to know how we celebrated Halloween when I was her age. “Where did you go trick or treating?” she asks. “And what did you dress up as?” But the truth is, Halloween barely registered in my girlhood lexicon – yet more evidence, from where Catriona sits, that my childhood was horribly disadvantaged.
Halloween, for her and her friends, is a highpoint in the autumn calendar – once school starts each September, it’s the big date on the horizon. Much time is spent in our household combing through the box of Halloweeny clothes in my wardrobe; Catriona has already searched through it several times in the hope of finding inspiration for her character in this year’s festivities. Last 31 October she dresse
26 October 2013, The Tablet
‘The evil around Halloween has nothing to do with the occult’
Get Instant Access
Continue Reading
Register for free to read this article in full
Subscribe for unlimited access
From just £30 quarterly
Complete access to all Tablet website content including all premium content.
The full weekly edition in print and digital including our 179 years archive.
PDF version to view on iPad, iPhone or computer.
Already a subscriber? Login
User Comments (1)
Surely looking down on us now with his lovely smile is Fr Kevin Cronin CM, principal of St Mary's Strawberry Hill in the 1960s. Upon his retirement Fr Kevin worked tirelessly with Sr Gemma Brennan IBVM as co-director of Westminster Catholic Parents' Association, which in time came to be Westminster Adult Religious Education Centre based at Maria Assumpta College Kensington, the present site of Heythrop College.
As Chairman of WAREC I attended a great many meetings with Fr Kevin at Heythrop, Maria Assumpta and Strawberry Hill and organised a great many adult RE courses throughout Westminster archdiocese. Many of the speakers came from these three great institutions and their great and visionary outreach programmes.
One of Fr Kevin's long term ambitions was the creation of a permanent alliance between Westminster Archdiocese and its three great higher eduction institutions. It would be great to see this ambition realized.