When I lived in Tannum Sands 30 years ago, nobody celebrated Halloween. Now it is as celebrated in this part of Central Queensland as Christmas. Kids dress up in costumes and go around trick or treating. They’ll sometimes throw eggs, which are a great mess to clean up.
There are lots of naysayers against this new Australian custom, but American cultural hegemony rolls on.
Sydney’s Daily Telegraph says:
FOR a country that happily embraces images of a White Christmas amid sweltering humidity, and duly accepts the springtime symbolism of Easter even as we unpack the winter woolies, protesting against Halloween is as nonsensical as it is mean-spirited.
And yet every year the naysayers resume their paranoid bleating about the inherent dangers of children dressing up and eating lollies in the presence of carved-out pumpkins.
It’s the end of Australia as we know it! We’re becoming slaves to Americanisation! So wail the critics who blithely assume Halloween celebrations are the exclusive domain of sugar-laden citizens of US suburbia.
But it is of course a tradition with Celtic origins, and yet you don’t hear Americans whining about how their culture has been hijacked by medieval Europeans.
That’s because they are secure enough in their own national identity to acknowledge a foreign festival and proudly make it their own.
Rather than succumb to yet another insecure bout of parochialism, we’d do well to do the same.
Rampant anti-Americanism notwithstanding, what’s to fear about festivities that involve nothing more sinister than children donning costumes and spreading a little pre-Christmas cheer around the neighbourhood?
