Why don’t we replace Remembrance Day with a national Day of the Dead?

This time of year features my two least favourite festivals, Halloween and Guy Fawkes Night, but the build up to Remembrance Day gives it a run for its money. I don’t mind Halloween being commercial, pagan, fake, foreign and likely to increase diabetes levels, so long as it’s for children; I just don’t know when October 31 turned into International Day of the Idiot.

But now Remembrance Day is marred by the silly pressure for people like Jeremy Corbyn to wear poppies. Peter Hitchens is totally correct on this one, when he writes:

‘If you don’t want to wear one, don’t. If you want to wear a White Poppy, then you should be free to do so. Pacifism (with which I disagree) is a legitimate opinion which should be openly expressed and debated, and implies no disrespect to the dead of war (many of whom were far from enthusiastic about the wars into which they were conscripted, or disillusioned by wars for which they originally volunteered).’

Personally I would lose no respect for Corbyn if he wore a white poppy, or none at all, if he felt that by wearing the red he was endorsing wars he felt unnecessary and wrong.