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Bishop's letter
11 September 2006
Dear Sir,
Halloween product range
As your stores begin to stock their shelves with this year's Halloween lines, I am writing to you - and your competitors - to pose a not-so-scary challenge.
This year, I would ask you to offer consumers a choice. Amongst your Halloween displays, I would like to see products that enable parents, teachers and children to choose a positive, alternative way to celebrate Halloween.
In the same way you offer your customers a choice with Fair-trade goods, organic or 'free from' allergy ranges, many people are similarly asking questions about the lack of alternatives in the current range of 'traditional' Halloween products. I have no wish to diminish your commercial success or to spoil anyone's fun as we lead up to an event that children enjoy - I simply would like to challenge you to present some alternatives, so that parents and children can make up their own minds how they celebrate Halloween.
Alternative ways of celebrating Halloween will require a different range of products from which retailers can make a profit and from which customers can choose. I enclose a copy of a resource that might form part of that choice - Better than Halloween, a new book produced by the Church of England aimed at people planning 'bright' parties at Halloween time. This, along with a list of other products already stocked by you, could form part of an in-store display of 'brighter' goods - glow tubes, face paints and hair braids, to name a few - needed for the kind of parties described in the book. I commend Better than Halloween to you and your product development team, and hope that you may draw inspiration from it, or even decide to stock it in your own stores.
The potential market for a more positive alternative way of celebrating Halloween is large. In addition to concerned parents within the wider public, the Church of England consists of 13,000 parishes with 1.7 million people worshipping each month - and over 90,000 voluntary youth workers. In addition, we support 4,700 Church Schools, teaching almost one million students.
Through my daily contact with schools and churches across my own area, I know that many parents are concerned about the underlying tone of some of the goods offered at Halloween, and the emphasis on products designed to scare or shock others. Indeed, you will be aware that some supermarkets already stop selling eggs to teenagers during October, and that many police forces have to resort to extra patrols and awareness activity to try and deter the more anti-social aspects of the event.
Given the huge influence you have on how families celebrate Halloween, I think that if you meet this challenge you will be making an important statement about your company's willingness to accept the responsibilities that come with being one of biggest suppliers of Halloween merchandise in the UK. Your stance will help send a message to those who use the event as an opportunity to act in a way that intimidates the vulnerable in our society, and will help promote a wider debate about exactly what place Halloween should take in a modern Britain.
Thank you for taking the time to read this letter. I would be grateful if you could consider how you might take forward my challenge, and I look forward to hearing from you.
Yours
Rt Revd David Gillett
Bishop of Bolton
Enc. Copy of Better than Halloween
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