Despite leaving home for university, one reader’s daughter is still intent on calling the shots when it comes to festive decorations
Dear Richard,
My wife and I have gradually got quite into Hallowe’en over the years, decorating the house in a ghoulish but hopefully light-hearted way and laying in industrial amounts of confectionery for marauding children.Our daughter, now 19 and at university, was an enthusiastic trick-or-treater.
Since she went to college a year and a bit ago, we have not been confronted with any egregious wokery – she still eats meat, rereads Harry Potter, will consent to get on an aeroplane if there’s a week on the beach at the end of it and so on.
Unexpectedly, though, she has been laying down the law about Hallowe’en, saying horror imagery trivialises violence at a time when real pain and suffering (and real-life bloody imagery) are all around us. On one level, I can see where she’s coming from; on another, I fear she has been radicalised by her film studies tutor and she needs to, well, get a life.
She will be away at the end of the month so if we want to deck the halls with severed limbs and hockey masks, there’s not much she can do about it. But we do video calls a lot so she’ll know it’s happening. I have half a mind to give it a rest or at least tone it down. But my wife is adamant that the show must go on.
We have so far been spared the Talk With A Self Important Progressive Teenager routine, and feel a little surprised that it’s come along over what we always thought was a bit of innocent gruesome fun.
If we go ahead, as I suspect we will given my wife’s stance, should we lie to our daughter about it? Or just accept the buzz-killing effect of her remonstrations?
– G, London N16
Dear G,
I see this as the thin end of what could turn into an ever-widening wedge. You’ve clearly dodged several bullets of teenage self-righteousness so far, but if you give way to your 19-year-old daughter over something as innocuous as Hallowe’en, where might it all end? If she goes vegan, will she expect you to abjure meat too? Might she tell you which country it is or isn’t acceptable for you to decide to holiday in? Would she proscribe the newspaper you choose to read? Or perhaps even insist which way you cast your votes at the next election?
No, you must stand your ground, G. If you want to give local kids a Hallowe’en treat and enter into the spirit (pun intended) of the occasion, it has absolutely nothing to do with the darling daughter. In fact, I see this as an opportunity for you to lay down the law as she transitions into adulthood: draw up the new boundaries of your relationship with her.
Which are, in effect, based on the simple principle: to each his – or her – own. She has no more right to tell you if you can or can’t celebrate Hallowe’en than you do her. Or mark any other cultural institution or event, come to that. I presume she’ll be refusing all invitations to firework parties on Guy Fawkes night because they commemorate an act of political violence and the subsequent brutal torture and protracted execution of eight terrorists; but that doesn’t mean you have to.
You celebrate Hallowe’en exactly as you want to, G, and don’t allow your daughter to be a reproachful ghost at the feast.
You can find more of Richard Madeley’s advice here or submit your own dilemma below.