The Problem with Halloween

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have a problem at all with Halloween as a significant event on a country’s cultural calendar. If that country is the US or Canada.

I just don’t think it belongs here in Australia. When I was a teen, the only experience we had of Halloween was from the TV, and mostly from the steady afternoon viewing diet of shows like My Three Sons, The Brady Bunch, The Beverly Hillbillies, and others in that genre. The concept of Halloween as an American cultural celebration was something I and my generation understood well, and I gained pleasure from that understanding as it gave me a social context in which to frame the workings of other countries.

But Halloween just wasn’t something we would do. It would seem preposterous to copy another country’s cultural heritage for no apparent reason.

In the last few years, an inexplicable interest in Halloween has become more and more prevalent, so much so that children look forward to it with a great degree of excitement – not that this is very surprising, considering lollies and chocolate are involved. Children are so easily bought.

The first time trick-or-treaters knocked on my door was when my last child was still only a baby, and had just been put down for her evening sleep. I opened the door and grumpily whispered that it wasn’t a good time. The poor kids got it and moved on to the next house where they probably hoped a more agreeable person would answer the door. A few days later, I met the mother of one of those children, and she apologetically referred to her child bothering me on Halloween night. I replied that it was no bother (though in reality it was), and then I told her that I had a philosophical opposition to Halloween, since it was a cultural festival that had no place in Australia. She listened politely, but I don’t think she shared my views.

The following year, I put a sign on our gate that said, No Trick-Or-Treaters. Rather humbug of me, I know, but I really do feel this strongly about it. That year, nobody came. But there have been times when children dressed as ghouls and ghosts, monsters and witches have knocked on our door, and I’ve had to turn them away in the most diplomatic way possible. Quite simply, I do not wish to give sweets of any kind to children I don’t know. I realise most or all of these children would have their parents’ permission to go trick-or-treating, but I have no way of being sure. As a result, I am not willing to risk the ramifications of a child being in trouble for accepting food from strangers, or eating too many lollies. What if the child is a diabetic and has snuck out without permission? It’s not an outlandish idea that there would be children dragged along on Halloween walks without their parents’ knowledge if they were sleeping at a friend’s house that night.  God forbid there should be a child with a severe nut allergy who eats one of my chocolate bars that has been contaminated with traces of nuts from a conveyor belt in the factory where it was packaged.

I also feel extremely uncomfortable about children knocking on random doors without knowing the residents. I’m not going to be a panic merchant now, and say that it’s potentially dangerous because they could, say, inadvertently meet with a pedophile. The likelihood of that is remote, and as kids are generally moving about their own neighbourhood, and in groups, there is little opportunity for a predator of that kind to harm them then and there. Still, I’m just not okay about children knocking on strangers’ doors uninvited and unannounced. It’s different if the purpose of the visit is to spread the word about a missing pet, or to retrieve a ball. Knocking on doors asking for sweets with the threat of tricks if the treats aren’t delivered is, on my radar, just not good manners.

So when my children started asking if they could join their friends in the annual Halloween knock and grab, I voiced my objections, explaining the reasons for my philosophical opposition to the practice. They listened with looks of despair on their faces, and – of course – continued in their quest to be allowed to participate. Gradually, year by year, they have worn me down. When they were younger,  I made a rule that they could go as long as there was a parent or responsible teenage sibling supervising the excursion. This meant that some invitations had to be declined. I know it might seem hypocritical of me to allow my children to participate (the oldest, at fifteen, is over it, thankfully) without being at the ready in my own home to dispense sweets. But I simply cannot take part. 

Now, if I lived in the US, I’m sure I would have a vastly different view of Halloween. I would indulge in the festivities, encouraging my children to dress up and take part with their friends. I would still have serious misgivings about my role as the giver of sweets, and of my children as knockers, but I would work out ways to get around it with sensible supervision. We do, after all, indulge in all sorts of mildly politically incorrect practices for the sake of social cohesion and cultural identity. Take Christmas, for example: Those who can afford to, sit around gorging themselves on rich food and throwing away lots of money on presents nobody needs or wants while there are so many who have so little in their own communities…but that’s another story.

We engage with Christmas if it’s part of our cultural heritage, and because there are many wonderful aspects of this festivity. Increasingly, there are members of Australian communities who do not celebrate Christmas. They observe other festivities, tied to their cultural heritage. These festivities – Ramadan and Chinese New Year to name a couple –  are incredibly significant in the lives of large numbers of Australians. What has always puzzled me is that often, we don’t embrace these religious and cultural festivals and share the celebrations in our communities. At school, children often speak of these celebrations, sharing stories of the traditions and gifts, and it’s wonderful to see how fascinating these accounts are to children from different cultural backgrounds.

So my point is, if we are going to widen our experience of cultural celebrations, why choose one that has no relevance in Australia? Do we have a significant number of American residents here? Not to my knowledge, and if we did, I would have no objection to them organising some Halloween fun to share with the rest of us. But I have a big problem with Australians actively taking part in Halloween and ignoring or shunning the religious and cultural festivals of fellow Australians.

Schools are getting behind Halloween, too, with little opposition from parents. If the local school were to have a Ramadan Day, I think there would be more than a few parents who would complain about the Muslims taking over the country. Why are we so eager to welcome in American culture when it has no relevance to our modern Australian reality? Being Australian no longer means being White, Anglo-Saxon Protestant (if it ever did). And what of our Indigenous Australians? How much do we know of their heritage? This is the knowledge our children should have. The modern Australian melting pot of cultures is what our children need to experience. Where, in all this, is the relevance of Halloween?