There are so many reasons to hate Halloween. I freely hated it before I had a child. This year, however, I feel myself getting sucked into the same vortex that left me enjoying In the Night Garden, Yo Gabba Gabba! and (lately) the Power Rangers.
It is this precisely this kind of parental delirium that gets exploited by commerce. It is a reliable marketing tactic: hook the kids and you reel in their parents' wallets. This is why fast-food chains have kids' meals with toys. This is why there are no standalone toys anymore; they come with their own shows (see: Ninjago and Beyblade). This is also why Halloween has become a thing in Australia.
Traders are not beyond cultural appropriation if there's custom to be had. That's the free market for you – normalising behaviours as 'tradition' via cyclic stocking of shelves. Let's face it: nothing keeps capitalism going more than conformity.
But it is bad enough that we still navel-gaze about our cultural identity without borrowing rituals from Americans. Does anyone even know Halloween about? If it is about remembering the dead, we already have rituals for remembering them, though usually the war dead. We visit cemeteries in private, at personally significant times of the year, not en masse during the Hallowmas triduum. If it is about marking the harvest season, ours do not coincide with that of North America (setting aside the idea that there is a typical harvest season, given our broad agricultural output).
Resist as I may, however, I can feel the rampant visibility of Halloween paraphernalia piercing my defences. As I walk past another display of carving pumpkins, witches' hats and skull masks, I can't help but think how cute my five-year old would look, dressed up as a vampire. I think about the fun he would have going around our block with his 'trick or treat' basket.
Then I realise: maybe this is what Halloween is about, or can be for our family, at least.
Playing at monsters makes kids less afraid. They come to know such creatures as unreal, as masks and costumes to wear for fun. They get to feel some sense of power, 'frightening' the adults who wield so much control over them. Moreover, as they walk with their friends or their parents door to door on Halloween, they can gain confidence – in presenting themselves, in learning the courtesies of encounter, and in adapting to whatever they are given. For younger kids, it is also an exercise in becoming familiar with the neighbourhood, in understanding that there is a world beyond their front door. For the adults who receive them, it is an opportunity to make that world a friendly one.
Halloween lends itself to moments that form the stuff of childhood memories. This does not guarantee that they are always good ones, but it is the shared experiences within families and between friends that often anchor our sense of history, our sense of self. Events which provide a natural platform for kids to have fun, or even run wild, are particularly worthwhile.
These are good reasons for us to appropriate Halloween. If we can't resist its lure, we can at least convert its consumerist intent into something that lasts longer than the contents of a 'trick or treat' basket.
It is certainly the only way I can live with participating.
Fatima Measham is a Melbourne-based social commentator who contributes regularly to Eureka Street. Her work has also appeared in The Drum, ABC Religion & Ethics, and National Times. She is a recipient of the Wheeler Centre Hot Desk Fellowship in 2013. She blogs at This Is Complicated and tweets as @foomeister.
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