Sweets in graveyard...?

[LadyHalesBroach]

I’ll set the scene...

Currently sat at a table having coffee in Kew Gardens enjoying five mins peace.

Table next to me are a bunch can of SWLondon Mums.

“Isn’t it sad that Tarquin and Hyacinth-Petunia (I think those were the names...) can’t go trick or treating this year, poor darlings.”

“I’m taking them to the graveyard and hiding sweets behind all gravestones instead.”

I’m sat here like what?! Maybe it’s because I recently lost my mum, but if someone came and stuck haribo on her gravestone, I would a)kick off either child or parent and b) eat her sweets.

Or am I being over precious?

My children's primary school playing field is an old graveyard. The gravestones are all lined up around the boundary, DD used to meet her friend at lunch next to 'Thomas Roberts'.

I think for most people it would not be so much of an issue that children are playing in a graveyard. I think the issue in this particular case is more that graves are used as part of a Halloween celebration to add some scary/ horror effect. This might offend people because they don't like the idea that their beloved death relatives or friends graves are used to create some shock effect in a Halloween play. I wouldn't like it.

But I would have no problem with children playing in a graveyard if they treated the graves with respect and saw them as places were death people who are loved and missed are burried.

I think it’s bloody weird.

I think for most people it would not be so much of an issue that children are playing in a graveyard

Except for so many posters it clearly is!

@BiBabbles

While I do think it's risky if they don't know the graveyard well - many of them have headstones that aren't stable as a pp said - I actually don't think it's that bad of an idea in theory.

It doesn't fit with current British ideas of what a cemetery is (which may be why so many are in such bad states), but cemeteries have a long history of being public spaces, not just for mourning and hiding the dead. Plenty of places around the world have traditions including eating at graves and it's not that unheard of in many places for kids to play in graveyards. It can be seen as a way to connect the joys of living with their dead, to keep their memories alive.

I think it would be great if cemeteries could be made safe enough for more public use. I don't think that's going to happen in the UK any time soon, there is still very much this attitude that death is only a very serious thing to be avoided seeing or mentioning any more than absolutely required. As someone from very different traditions, I find that sad and the idea of finding sweets in a graveyard a rather interesting twist on offerings shared with the dead.

I think this is fair. And mainstream English culture is very odd about death, appearing to see it as some kind of unmentionable minority affliction. Half the graveyards I knew best when I lived in London were essentially public parks, cruising grounds, short cuts, full of people eating their lunch on benches etc.