To the editor:

In the Public Forum for Oct. 22, James A. Bond expresses alarm and distress at all the Halloween goings-on. He refers us to Deuteronomy 18:10-12 (where I don’t find Halloween, pumpkins or jack-o’-lanterns mentioned). Pumpkins and jack-o’-lanterns seem to attract his concern, in particular.

These ideas, we learn, were brought to these shores by “European immigrants” about 1900. Who are these ominous immigrants? I would refer him to a story written more than a century and half ago, Washington Irving’s “Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” Many of the inhabitants of Tarrytown, New York, seem to have been saturated in folk beliefs about goblins and the like. And from where was Washington Irving an “immigrant”? As for me, I’m not much concerned with a “powerful spirit” who ends up in a pie.

Olive Phillips,

Lawrence