Hallowe'en here is like a small echo of Gaza. Fireworks, which are, strictly speaking, illegal (from the days when people were liable to make a revolution with their contents) are ubiquitous on that night. Samhain has also become Americanised, with lots of plastic cobweb material (fatal to small animals and birds, plus plastic skulls, plastic spiders, plastic witches, etc, as well as the old-fashioned thing of gangs of children dressed up and made up going around begging for sweets - nowadays saying "trick or treat" in the American style rather than "any apples and nuts" as we used to. The kids were flawlessly polite, most taking only one sweet from my plastic boxes of plastic-wrapped chocolate, and thanking me nicely, before going out again into the explosives-riddled sunset.