So I thought, in light of the holiday, I would explain how the French do Halloween. First off, it's important to remember that Halloween is an export (from Scotland and Ireland). The only reason I know this is because I had my students read a handout. Apparently (I'm trusting the internet with this one) "the ancient Gaels believed that on October 31st, the boundaries between the worlds of the living and the dead overlapped and the deceased would come back to life and cause havoc such as sickness or damaged crops."*
So yes, it's a cultural appropriation for the French, but it's much more of a geographic leap for the United States to embrace Halloween than the French so I don't know why they act so far removed from it.
And trust me, they're really fumbling when it comes to Halloween. See the following that I found in a costume store--
Bourreau Blanc means white hangman. I know...
It's like someone quickly explained to them the basics of the holiday and they ran with it. You can dress weird and eat sweets? Tell me more... And in fact, Halloween was quite en vogue 5-10 years ago (according to the woman I live with).
The students I teach confirmed this lead. According to them, children stop trick-or-treating around age 12 and you only really dress up if you're going to a party. When I asked why Halloween wasn't popular anymore they gave a very mature answer for a group of individuals that collectively smell so bad. "It's too commercial" or "It's too much of an enterprise." I heard this same line of logic in three different classes and I can only imagine this rhetoric is deeply embedded in French culture. "What about Christmas" I countered. Surely they couldn't deny that Christmas is a money making machine no matter where you go. This caught them off guard. Something about Noel--they argued--perhaps the time of year, the color palette and the food, made Christmas O.K. with the French. Plus it's sort of in their historical past.
The question that really threw me for a loop came as we were making a list of Halloween vocabulary. This is a neat trick for any uninspired teacher in that it allows you to pretty much do nothing for a couple of minutes while the chil'en think. We got through "pumpkin" and "skeleton" before falling on "candy." A boy in the front who hadn't yet participated raised his hand. His head was tilted the way puppies do when they hear a weird noise. "What does zat have to do with ze song Candy Shop." I was struck off-balance.
"Like the song by 50 cent?"
"Oui."
"Well" I fumbled, "there was this really popular theme in rap music during the early 2000's where candy was used as a metaphor for...umm...sexy things." At least this was a topic I finally felt knowledgable on. "Do you guys know the song Laffy Taffy?" Blank stares. I guess that was kind of a stretch.
"Oh! Like zat song, Lollipop!"
"Exactly!" I beamed. "Like lollipop!" Finally it felt like we were getting each other. Like I was Jack Black in School of Rock. Another girl raised her hand. We're on a roll I thought.
"What does that have to do with Halloween?"
Oh. Right.
I continued the lesson by asking what were popular costumes in France. This is where the French really flounder. So unimaginative. It's as if they wanted praise for knowing vocabulary like "ghost" and "vampire." Not going to cut it in my class. I explained that in America this year the most popular costumes where things like Miley Cyrus at the VMA's or Daft Punk or the dad from Malcolm in the Middle in an apron (they don't really know Breaking Bad so I improvised).
Now it was their turn to look unamused. "Zat's so commercial" said one girl from behind a thin cigarette I imagined her smoking.
And that's when I realized that America doesn't only embrace holidays as economic capital, holidays are almost exclusively just that. I was struck by my own innate reaction: Why would anyone question the commercial element of a holiday? Do they come any other way?
Who knows! Maybe Hershey was in cahoots with 50 Cent the whole time. In exchange for life saving surgery at the hands of the sexy green M&M after his bulletproof vest was pierced, 50 was obligated to make candy cool again (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory holds up, but Gene Wilder's more scary than sexy).
Anyway, I'll take a commercialized holiday over one that accidentally recycles stale racist imagery for euros any day.
I dunno. Here's a picture of me dressed as Harry Potter for anyone who made it this far--
I was too cheap to buy a wand so I found that stick on the ground.
*http://www.halloweenhistory.org/
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