Savoy Truffle (Halloween)

They didn't get any savoy truffles, or any other kind of truffle, while Trick or Treating this year. But they didn't care. Halloween is about dressing up, running around with your friends, collecting and sorting candy, and the girls got to do all of that.
   We'd been warned before we moved to Melbourne that Halloween isn't really celebrated in Oz. While that was true a few years ago, it grows more popular every year. Aussies are starting to embrace it, especially once they experience how much fun it is for the kids. 
   It's still very divisive. For a few days before and after Halloween, there are letters to the editors about this awful, imported holiday. The most common Aussie complaint is that Halloween is just another example of "American cultural imperialism." Others just bemoan the "rampant consumerism."
   One of my Aussie friends posted on Facebook: "Ok, so my annual rant has started a little earlier this year. But I am already feeling frustrated and embarrassed about how blindly we, as a nation accept this irrelevant American holiday. Every year it gets worse and worse. There is a huge 

dedicated Halloween section in my local Woolies which I am sure wasn't there last year. Come on everyone. Take a stand! Don't buy into this unnecessary consumerism that retailers are so desperate for you to embrace."

   Of course, I had to share my side of the story, but she dismissed it as something I grew up with. One mom even posted "Actually vik, get a load of this!!! A certain primary school CHANGED the date of the junior concert because of parental pressure, claiming the concert clashed with hallo-friggen-ween!!!! Can you believe it!!!!!:

   My friend's husband, playing devils advocate, linked to this article. Along the same vein Deborah Brown's article, Halloween Really Isn't That Scary, in The Age. Since I don't know how long that link will work, I want to excerpt a few paragraphs. Not because I need to convince my readers (pretty much all Americans) that Halloween is not evil, but because it's interesting to get an Aussie's viewpoint.

   "Somehow this harmless event polarises communities into those for and those against. Those against rant about American cultural imperialism and the irrelevance of the adoption of a tradition which has no resonance in the sunburnt country. They decry the rampant commercialism evident when supermarkets start selling jack-o-lanterns next to butternut pumpkins, and Dracula teeth in the toothpaste aisle: for harried parents it is yet another pester-power gauntlet to run on the way to the checkout.

   To those belittlers of Halloween I won't point out the obvious positive influences contributed to society by American culture (oh, OK then: Mustangs, Steinbeck, Mad Men). Nine-year-olds don't know about the encroachment of American popular culture on the rest of the world. They are global citizens without even knowing what that means.

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   To the Halloween denigrators I won't point out the Scottish origins of the festival or the equally repugnant commercialisation of Mother's Day, Father's Day and that most unromantic celebration of price gouging, Valentine's Day.

   What I will point out is that celebrating Halloween is FUN. What other time of year can a decision about whether to dress as a punk or a pirate be solved by dressing as a punk pirate? Or a zombie Cinderella? It's an opportunity to pass on some traditional skills to our children: making costumes out of sheets (ghosts), the many uses of toilet paper (mummies), and recycling laddered stockings by stuffing them with crumpled Herald pages (spider's legs).

   Children love Halloween. They love dressing up. They love using mum's eyeliner to draw scars on their faces. They love gathering in roaming gangs (under watchful parental eyes) on a school night. Yes, they also love the edible booty that comes with the territory, but that intake can be managed and rationed (and pilfered from).

So rather than lament that Halloween embodies all that is evil about the Americanisation of our children, open your front door on October 31 and see the children smiling underneath their ghastly face paint.That's not such a scary idea, is it?"

  Fortunately, plenty of our friends wanted to participate. On Halloween, we started at a friend's house for bowls of spag bol, hoping to fill the kids up with something healthy first. Then we headed off to a "Haunted House" nearby. While it wouldn't warrant much attention in the US, it was pretty good by Aussie standards, as the whole garage was decorated. There were 7 or 8 different bowls with treats, and kids were allowed to take one from each bowl.

   Then we headed off to another street where we met up with some of our friends. It was a great street for Trick or Treating, really long with no streets to cross. Because Daylight Savings is in effect, even though it was 6:30 it was still really light out. Consequently, the kids had to knock on every door...you couldn't use the house lights as any indicator as to whether people were home or not. A large percentage of the houses did give out candy, although some ran out. One person offered the kids a choice of a tin of baked beans or packet of crackers! 

 

    Then we drove to another area to meet up with more school friends. This area was a bit more organized. Flyers were handed out in advance with information, and houses that wanted to participate put balloons or a ribbon or a note on their fences to indicate that they had candy. It really simplified things, and they didn't have to waste time or hassle occupants who didn't want to be bothered.

   We returned home around 8, with two very exhausted kids. I have a feeling they ate too much candy. How do I know? When we got inside, they asked if they could have "something healthy, like a banana or an apple or a hard-boiled egg."
   It was a nice evening, and thankfully the weather co-operated. But Aussies have a few things to learn about Halloween. First and foremost, lollies should be wrapped!

   True, it wasn't quite as good as home. We didn't have a Halloween party (hmm, maybe next year), the kids didn't run around in the dark with glow sticks, the grown-ups didn't walk around with cups of wine or margaritas, and there were no Milk Duds or Reese's Peanut Butter cups anywhere. Still, I am so happy that my kids didn't have to miss out on one of the highlights of childhood.
   Now, we just need to get the Aussies to celebrate Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July....