Should Halloween be banned? There are certainly some costumes that could do with being consigned to the dust bin of history, but this Russian region has decided that it has had enough of the entire holiday.
There shall be no luridly coloured Halloween parties in Arkhangelsk. Officials have banned the holiday from being celebrated at local schools, according to the Moscow Times.
The ministry's statement said that Halloween is "incoherent to basic traditional values and causes a negative influence on fragile minds."
Earlier this month, Russian Orthodox Church in Siberia's Krasnoyarsk region called on local authorities to ban Halloween on a similar basis.
Priest Maxim Zolotukhin told local STS-Prima television station that children may get depressed after Halloween because they do not understand the difference between make-believe and reality, and so evil will enter their souls.
Two years ago, Regional legislators in Siberia's Omsk region banned Halloween celebrations in all schools, saying Russian children had to be protected from “dangerous and morally corrupt U.S. cultural influence.”
Officials have also called for the banning of zombie and monster costumes from toy stores, because they are "harmful to children."
https://archive.is/yNkm5
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/11957354/russian-region-bans-halloween-because-it-is-harmful-to-children.html
