If we needed a neat example of of two universal truths, that freedom of expression must be protected and that religion (definitively, inherently based on faith i.e. belief in that which cannot be proven or demonstrated) and the state (the dimenions of which are established by laws which in themselves depend on material evidence and empirical facts) must be kept separate, we have it in the sad affair of Mrs Gibbons and the Sudanese Teddy Bear (which sounds like an unpublished Holmes case, except even latter-day Conan Doyle wouldn't dare attempt a plot so potty).

There are some who would argue that this is just another scare story, grist to the mill of an Islamaphobic British mass media hungry for any opportunity to portray Muslims as the bad guys. I'm afraid I can't agree, as sympathetic as I am to that case (the wildly speculative stories that surfaced during the death of Pakistan's national cricket coach Bob Woolmer are just one alternative example I could point to in support of it). That our press should not report on a Briton arrested overseas and facing the prospect of a public flogging - regardless of the specific charges and prosecuting nation- is unthinkable, an absurd suggestion. That the case in question happens to be one concerning a bugaboo de jour (Islamic tradition concerning the use of the prophet's name and/or image) is certainly unfortunate, although it has been heartening to see the number of Muslims- within the Sudanese community and elsewhere- who have used the incident as an opportunity to speak out on the issue in moderate and reasonable terms, reminding anyone willing to listen that not everyone with roots in the Islamic world is a slavering jihadist, despite what certain British tabloids and Republican presidential candidates would have us believe.

However a perfectly innocent woman has been subjected to a gruelling ordeal, needlessly and publicly. Why? A comment posted here suggests that a school were Mulsim and non-Muslim children are educated together by both Mulslim and non-Muslim, even Western and avowedly Christian, staff would sorely vex certain figures in the country, figures who might seek any opportunity- no matter how tenuous- to mount a legal challenge to its very existence. Is that kind of orgnaised vendetta what's happened here? Or is this pathetic prosecution just a gesture from a hopeless government, attempting to demonstrate some muscle to its people and the world, while all the while the open wound of Darfur weeps on and on?

Man, I am on fire. A day after I blog about holidays/multiculturalism, this happens.

First of all, the report mentioned isn't yet available to the public, so those reporting on it have a moral responsibility to truthfully represent it. Despite the Mail and others' (il)liberal use of the word downgrade, it's notable that none can actually offer a contextualised statement from the report containing it. Certainly they can site recommendations wherein it is suggested that other holidays receive greater levels of attention/observance, but none that actually say Christmas should get less. Indeed, the report is quoted as saying that no government could "expunge" Christmas "even if we wanted to". From that we can infer that there exists no such motive, and so using the word downgrade, especially in quotation marks, represents a willful, sensationalist distortion on the part of James Chapman, his editor, and everyone else who has followed their lead.

Of course, neither has the Mail considered the numbers of Eastern European and African immigrants among the cultures described who are professed Christians. Ask any inner-city priest, vicar or minister in the UK what multiculturalism has done for attendance figures and they'll paint a rosy picture of the immigration flood/deluge/swamp/aquatic metaphor de jour. But I forget; we live in a country where Far and Centre Right will happily use any old set of statistics to back up their preconceived arguments whilst damning the other for the very same practice, engage in an endless game of numerical one-up-manship and never think, never dare to use the subtler, but ultimately more effective, methodology of adult debate.

It's like the recent furore over the new jobs/foreign workers figures. I'm no New Labour fan: they genuinely don't have a clue how many people are in what jobs and where they were born, representing colossal incompetence; Brown's promise of "British jobs for British workers", apart from being a bit of banal rabble-rousing, was also demonstrably illegal; and it's abundantly clear that they spend entirely too much time and money over "no shit, Sherlock" reports such as the one described appears to be. But with regard to this week's rammy, would it have hurt anyone- and I mean any news outlet at all- to mention the figures of emigration from the UK since 1997 in the same breath as the confusion over immigration? I know- sight unseen- that the two don't cancel each other out but I'm damn sure it would have taken a lump out of the total, whatever the difference. You have to go digging to the very bottom of a BBC webpage to discover that while Indian and Poland are, respectively, the number one and number three top "last countries of residence" for UK immigrants, the silver medal goes to... Australia. And close runners-up are the USA and South Africa. The nature of Indian education means that the overwhelming majority of immigrants come with the essential tool for successful "integration", namely, English language skills. Hmm. Sounds like the Right's problem isn't with immigrants/foreigners nationals, but with, whisper it, the wrong sort of foreigner. Combine all this with an analysis of birth rates and and a detailed look at what the millions of new jobs in question entail (are Britons willing or qualified to fill them?) and we have a very different story from the one reported, one about ministerial mediocrity and a skills/training gap in British secondary and tertiary education. Very worthy, but not headline stuff. On with the lies!

Like I said before, I may know one or two Muslims who are bemused by the likes of Hallowe'en or Christmas, but I don't know any who are offended by it, and I know a damn site more who happily join in come the day. On the other hand, I know many, many, many whites who don't have a clue what Ramadan, Diwali or Hanukkah are, or even when they happen. Can the Mail, or anyone else for that matter, seriously argue that Britian wouldn't be a richer, more intelligent place if its population weren't made aware of (not forced to celebrate!) these things? That if religions/cultures were in some measure demystified (Christianity included), greater tolerance and understanding wouldn't be the result? That the disenfranchisement we're consistently told certain quarters of our society feels wouldn't be countered, at least a little bit, if "Eid Mubarak" played as readily on the lips of passers-by as "Merry Christmas"?

There’s been a certain amount of anti-Hallowe’en sentiment in the UK media this year, and not just the usual confusion over whether it’s offensive to Christians because it’s bordeline Satanism, offensive to Pagans because the Christians moved All Saints’ and stole it, offensive to Muslims because they just don’t get it or offensive to those who like a party because it’s such a sorry shadow of the far more exciting Dia de la Muertos. This year I’ve detected a prevalent thread of “we never used to have Hallowe’en in my day” guff; this is the usual London-centric drivel. Scots have celebrated Hallowe’en in one form or another for centuries.

The real objection seems to be the perceived “commercialisation/Americanisation” of the holiday. Certainly there are non-celtic parts of the United Kingdom that didn’t make a big deal of the 31st of October until very recently, perhaps contenting themselves with lighting a candle or two and eating a wee Soul Cake. Scottish children, however, were always to be seen guising, carving turnips and dooking for apples. Clearly these customs have of late fallen prey to the inherently more colourful and appealing trick or treating, pumpkins and processed sugar (although Glaswegians have for several decades indulged their sweet-tooths with garish Hallowe’en cakes). Another occasion when Scots certainly didn’t used to make as large a hooplah as now was Christmas, preferring a minimal observance on that day and saving their festivities (i.e. drinking) for Hogmanay. If anything, ours has come to more closely resemble the English tradition than the American.

As any pub bore, Wikipedia editor or smart-alec cartoonist knows, Christmas is a complete mongrel, as disparate a recipe of cultural kitchen scraps, mythological suet and commercial sixpences as a brandy-bathed pudding. Bemoan the removal of Christ from Xmas if you will, the fact remains that Europeans have always, always, always gathered for feasts in the bleak midwinter, hauling evergreens into the hall and urging the spring to return. Whether you call it Christmas or not is incidental, and as little to do with the point of the thing as the 25th of December has to do with Jesus of Nazareth’s birthday.

The difference with Hallowe’en, I think, is that whatever way you look at it, its roots lie in something wholly spiritual, and that makes secular society faintly uncomfortable. The majority can see the appeal of at least one of Christmas' inherent yet not exclusively religious qualities (be it charity, family, consumerism or bingeing), but Hallowe’en is fundamentally about death and the afterlife. We buttoned-up Northern/Western Europeans have lost the knack of how to properly grieve and properly celebrate the departed. That’s why we write off the afore-mentioned Dia de la Meurtos as kitsch. In fact, our Latin cousins have got it right; the dead are no more inherently scary or malignant than our selves, so let’s throw them a party (I’ve said this before, but it’s a sentiment beautifully conveyed in Tim Burton’s The Corpse Bride). Meanwhile we try to distance ourselves from the root of the thing, make it less about actual, factual death and more about fictional monsters and ghouls.

Certainly it’s hard to swallow the aisles and aisles of dismembered rubber limbs, skull-shaped punch bowls, spider-strewn tablecloths and light-up, rain-proof plastic ghosts confronting one in the local Asda or Tescos. Hallowe’en, for all the changes that have befallen it, is still only one day. A few hours in fact. The expenditure of Christmas- as horrendous as that can become for those who can ill afford it- is rationalised by the fact that it is a matter of at least three days if not a week-and-a-half. But how does the modern parent deal with the child who wants their home turned into a cartoon spook house for the duration of one school-night?

Also, as the perception of children in this country turns increasingly toward demonising them, the prospect of being warmly received in the houses of strangers (or even on their doorsteps) becomes increasingly remote. Trick or treating/guising becomes looks set to become as infrequent in years to come as New Year’s “First Footing” has in the last two decades. Hallowe’en and all the other holidays like it become increasingly about organised, safe “fun”, preferably at home (tv specials, decorations, tat) or in regimented mass spectacles (inner-city fireworks displays in early November, celebrity Christmas light switching-ons, ticketed Hogmanay concerts in front of landmarks), than spontaneous merry-making. More and more opportunities to spend, spend, spend on hollow simulacra of actual cultural tradition, aided and abetted by the willing hacks at Hallmark (surely only a matter of time before they attempt to pump up April Fool’s Day into an annual celebration of crass japery, all over-sized comedy hats and plastic dog turds?). Only the ASBO-swathed hoodies of Lanark, Leeds, Limerick and Liverpool keep the torches of jolly anarchy burning with their heart-warming/fucking terrifying adherence to Mischief Night.

However loud the complaints of the anti-American cultural guardians, the truth is that popular fiction can only superficially modulate what’s already present and understood in the blood and bones of a country. Thanksgiving is as prevalent in American imagery as Hallowe’en and Christmas, yet no one in the UK will be seriously considering having the last Thursday in November off this year. Yes, we’ve taken to sooking on USA-striped candy-canes, but we pinched nutcrackers from the Germans before that, and wassail before that. Western movies and tv have done nothing to dent the popularity of Walpurgis or Golden Week elsewhere in the world. And the Americans have themselves proven you can’t foist a holiday onto people; look at the confusion and controversy surrounding Washington’s/Lincoln’s/Presidents’ Day and Kwanzaa.

It’s the politics of the moment, the insistence that we should be afraid of each other, that’s brought about the changes I’ve described above. Who knows? Perhaps the observance of holidays of every stamp is actually the route to positive multi-culturalism. Maybe our grandchildren, living in a Chinese-dominated economy and with mixed eastern-European parentage, will all be going crazy for super-flammable Ghost Festival money and Dyngus Day soakings? They certainly sound more interesting than the kind of dull, forced larks lampooned here.