Last year we were egged.
No knocks on the door, no refusal to treat. Definitely no costumes. In fact one of the attacks was at midnight, just as I was going to bed. Welcome to Halloween in a small town in the middle of Australia.
Kids have been getting excited and planning for the past week, but not their costume or their party. They’ve been discussing who they will vandalise, leaving eggs out in the sun (and it’s 40+ here). One was spotted buying 5 dozen eggs yesterday.
Something has been lost in translation.
Forget pagan origins, what are they? And forget the concept that you put some effort into a costume, have a bit of fun, maybe get some chocolate. It’s gone past bribery – they don’t even threaten give me some chocolate or I’ll egg you. It’s just a night when you are allowed to run around and vandalise things. Isn’t it?
When I was a kid Halloween meant maybe a party at school. We were far more likely to dress up for Friday the 13th. We don’t get orange pumpkins and I’ve never seen a jack-o-lantern in real life. Today there is a bit more going on, but still the main involvement most families I know have is the big discussion before hand – are you supposed to have some lollies there just in case? Or do you expect people who are trick or treating to organise it and only go to the houses with a balloon out the front?
It’s only through books and social media that I know this is completely different in other places, and I suppose this is globalisation. Forget trade agreements and McDonalds, the internet is bringing world culture together. But are we really egging each other?
Culture is more than a set of rituals or language, it has a depth that isn’t conveyed in 140 characters or even a 500 word blog post. Ethnographers have known that since Malinowski told them to come down off the mission verandah, but I think the web has put most of us firmly back in the shade. I’m often told by people around me that we are ‘losing Australian culture’ and ‘just copying America.’ This is especially true with kids out here, who love World Wrestling and anything to do with rap. They identify strongly with African Americans superficially because of skin colour but mainly because of their sense of oppression.
Personally I have no patience with the whole ‘losing culture’ idea – culture is dynamic and ever-changing. Trying to recreate or freeze a particular culture as the ‘real’ one would be as silly as trying to recreate the Miocene as the world’s ‘real’ ecology. Something that is always changing cannot be lost. ‘Copying,’ however, is certainly happening. To me, the point is that copies are not perfect reproductions. As we sit on our virtual verandahs surveying the world we may pick up bits and pieces but we are incorporating them into our own surroundings, backgrounds and attitudes to come up with something unique. We are all in the process of creating many new cultures, and that’s pretty cool.
On Friday morning I will take my girls to a fancy dress birthday party, but they’ll probably go as a mermaid and a princess or possibly a ladybird. On Sunday night I will check everything is locked and close the gate to limit any damage. Over the weekend I’ll be on Twitter, Facebook or checking out blogs and I will hear about the fun things my US friends, whom I’ve never met, are doing. I’m sure that some of it will sound exciting and interesting and I might incorporate it into what we do next year. But it won’t be the same.
“Personally I have no patience with the whole ‘losing culture’ idea – culture is dynamic and ever-changing.”
As an anthropology-minded archaeologist, this is the hardest thing to pound into people’s heads. I just imagine that it has been that way for a long time. Loss and change are hard to deal with, probably more so now than in the past because we have the luxury of living longer. We carry with us the memories of a lot more generational change and I imagine it is quite scary.
Us “Acceptors” may indeed be a minority.
What Natya said. I find it really interesting in trying to chat about culture in a friendly-oh isn’t that interesting-way with other members of my own subculture, many people become deeply offended. They like culture in the abstract, like learning an African tribal song or Native American mythology, but they themselves are above having a culture of their own. Start talking about social hierarchies outside the workplace and all bets are off.
I had not heard before that Halloween was celebrated so differently in Australia from the US tradition. As I was reading your post aloud to my partner (we are in our 60s) he said he’d heard that in some large eastern urban cities in the US, there are concerns about Halloween becoming an excuse for vandalism here, too.
I’m sorry that the holiday has become twisted away from the “trick or treat” tradition of little kids dressed in cute costumes going out to get candy from the neighbors… but it has never been free from ugly urban legends. The most prevalent was that bad people would put pins or broken glass in the candy; and the phrase “trick or treat” was about doing some mischief to the house in case the owners didn’t have candy for the kids who came by.
I’m sorry your house was egged last year… a few years ago my daughter’s house was egged and it was intimidating. Her house was decorated with blue and white lights to celebrate Hanukkah that usually overlaps Christmastime. We live in a fairly liberal large city with a large Jewish population and she had felt that it was safe to put up the decorations — but took them down after the egging. This was not just a general Halloween teens-gone-wild-on-everybody victimization, but a singling out of a home for a particular expression of the ethnicity of the inhabitants. The eggs may have been harmless in and of themselves, but the disrespect behind them was … not nice. Maybe it’s not nice in Australia, at Halloween, either.
Given my wife is American, events like Thanksgiving and Halloween are something of a bigger deal in our household. I remember having American-centric books and media in growing up and being confused by the different words or events (Fall for Autumn, Christmas winter, zee for zed etc.), but America was always on the edge of Australian culture. Now my son will grow up with it in context, knowing that he is half American and that it is part of him.
I must admit, fortunately I haven’t had the same experiences as Deb when it comes to the Halloween pranks, but I do sympathise with what she means, especially regarding the fluidity of culture. My pet area of medical anthropology is perhaps the most frustrating in regards to this, especially in the west where medicine is so biophysical, it’s impossible to imagine the significance of its social component. I find it maddening when people refer to Australia’s Anglican heritage, as if Britain emerged from the foam fully formed. As I used to say, it’s as British as beef (a French word), chips (Belgian) and the royal family (a mongrel mix of European heritage if ever there was!).
@Natalya and AU, I’ve done some anthropology and archaeology too, I wonder if we think that way as a result or if thinking that way encourages you to go into those areas. That’s an interesting point about longevity.
@Wendy I didn’t make it clear, this isn’t really typical of cities or probably most places. I live in a very small town 5 hours from the nearest town with a very high Aboriginal population. It’s like a foreign country even for most Australians! I know what you mean about the intimidation factor, most of the time we leave everything unlocked. While the eggs themselves weren’t a problem – they had very bad aim – it was the shock of being targetted.
When I was in Zurich last week I was shocked at the change in just one year in the Halloween-itis. Last year, the toy store had no Halloween stuff. This year (exact same time period) every employee was in costume and every kind of Halloween junk was happily being bought up.
Frankly, when I was a child… long ago… Halloween WAS about pulling pranks. I had my candy stolen (older children would come by and grab your bag of goodies). It was pretty traumatic. But I do have to admit when older, I joined in the yearly fun of stealing the local Green Stamps sign (ok that really ages me) and putting it up in front of the local undertakers (there was only one).
We didn’t break pumpkins, but if we forgot and left ours out, they were trashed. But most of the pranks were “fun”, and usually someone had a big bon fire and we had popcorn.
When I lived in Wisconsin, Halloween was ALWAYS the Sunday before (if it wasn’t on a Sunday)) and it was between 2-4 in the afternoon. Kids could walk without fear of cars, it was warmer (you try making a little Mermaid costume for a kid in Wisconsin…I did it, and she was warm). It was also great for taking photographs of kids in costume.
We only got six trick-or-treaters at our house in a residential neighborhood next to two schools. No eggs yet, thank goodness. I think here in Geographic Isolation the holiday was just too much this year. Schools had pageants on Friday. The local university had several kid-friendly events. Our merchants downtown hosted a huge even on Saturday… these and other “Safe-Treat” options along with distrust of strangers I think contributes to our low numbers. Our 97 year-old neighbor said that ten years ago she typically got around 50 treaters.