Slovakia has decided to impose the first round of nationwide testing over the Halloween weekend, a time when families always get together to remember their dead.
Slovaks at this time usually go to cemeteries and fill them up with flowers and lights.
It began in the ninth century, when families left food on the table for the dead.
But this time they will be standing in line before going into state imposed imprisonment in their high-rise city homes.
Life with the dead is safest if it takes place between the hours of 1am and 5am.
One way or the other though Central and Eastern Europeans will do everything they can to make sure the cemeteries will have their other-worldly glow of memory and love.
Otherwise, here too there will be anarchy on the streets not seen in the last thirty years.
But is the Day of the Dead, like Christmas in the UK, facing irreparable damage because of Covid?
Will it just become a day of devilish costumes and trick-or-treating… trik alebo maškrta ..?
https://www.ft.com/content/5ae1ad76-8f76-40a7-9d72-9483aae3997a
Yes, trick or treating already has adopted a name in Slovakia and America’s ghouls and ghosts – in the guise of Bart Simpson and Harry Potter – now appear at the cemetery gates.
The new Covid lock-down is already set to cost Slovakia at least two billion euros – and there could be an added phenomenal fiscal loss over this holiday too.
The market for the cemetery lamps is estimated to be worth several hundred millions. The numbers of lamps bought are huge. An average grave is covered almost entirely in them through the week of All Saints.
Central Europeans also put fresh flowers and artificial wreaths on graves.
So as Brits abroad, what will you be doing for Halloween?
On the plus side, you will be able to watch a box-set without having to answer the door every few minutes to ‘Bart Simpson’.
And at Christmas you will be able to Skype or Zoom your relatives back in the homeland.
But there is no Skype or Zoom connection to the dead.
Meanwhile it looks like a bleak bleak mid-winter in the UK.
And soon the sporadic bits of civil disobedience we’ve been seeing on the streets could become real anarchy.
Yep, millions of people could soon tell Boris and the government to ‘stuff’ its Covid laws where the turkey doesn’t gobble.
Many believed Boris and his crew haven’t a credible plan to slow infections, that they’ve lost control of the virus – and they are no longer following the scientific advice.
And Maureen Eames, aged 83, may be our new aged revolutionary.
“I don’t give a sod,” she said about the new laws “I’m 83. I want to get out and live.”
She was immediately urged to stand as Prime Minister.
And the backlash has forced Welsh leaders to have a rethink over their Soviet-style shopping ban and their bristling border guards.
So, as we face a cold war on the streets this Christmas, could Boris seize the initiative, put the festive season back on the table and boost the British economy with a feast of spend spend spend?
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