See my post on the origin of costumes on the previous post.

You would probably have liked the celebration more if you had gotten lots of really neat candy on Hollowe’en (and candy was not a common thing for kids to have all the time - like 60 years ago for example). But alas, you spent your begging years in France where the festival did not exist. And when we got to Phoenix I remember two families stuffed religious tracks against the holiday in your candy bags. Witches were not in with the fundamentalists there and finding people that passed out guilt instead of candy was a real bummer (for me at least).

I actually have fond memories of trick-or-treating in Massachussetts, and I don’t recall missing it in France. It was fun in Phoenix again, though I was a bit older. I remember you were sore when I dressed up as a clown with one of your ties that you still thought was stylish (Jim is my Dad). The religious stuff didn’t affect me then, all the kids thought those people were stupid, and we got plenty of candy anyways.

I enjoy the trick-or-treating at Halloween, from seeing kids in costumes to finishing the leftover candy. In my opinion, Halloween is (and should remain) a children’s festival, despite it’s origins. Adults have adapted it to fit either their compulsive need to decorate their yard or their twisted need to display some hidden morbidity. I guess there would be no real scare for the children to face if there were no make-believe haunted yards or stories of sickos circulating in the community, but it just doesn’t seem necessary. I see a lot of advertising for adults-only costume parties at bars and night-clubs, and that just seems like a lame excuse to drink, sort of like St. Patrick’s Day in the US.

The sad thing is that marketers have pushed and encouraged Halloween to spread in Europe. And they are pushing the costume party aspect of it, because that is so much more easily adopted than the community trick-or-treating aspect. This has resulted in some backlash reported for the first time by the AP this year.

To be fair, when I lived in France 5 years ago, I knew a French lady who had lived in the US with her child and loved the idea of Halloween so much she imported it to her neighborhood. She had presented the idea long ago at a community meeting and then organized it every year. She helped the neighborhood kids with costumes and then she and other parents chapparoned them around the neighborhood in the late afternoon, followed by a kid’s party at the local park. Then at night she held an adult costume party for neighbors and friends at her house. Come to think of it, Carnival has been declining in popularity in Europe for various reasons so maybe Halloween is filling the costume party void.