Halloween Nicht

One of our blog readers has asked: What do Australians do for Halloween? (And you thought we ignored all those comments…). Despite the best efforts of Cadbury and Mars, the Australians do not celebrate Halloween. They know it exists and understand the basic concept, and you may find the odd decoration or costume in a store, but for the most part they think it is more than slightly strange to have a holiday where people arrive at your house unannounced, demand gifts, and commit criminal mischief if you refuse to give them anything.

Anticipating the usual follow up question, no, they don’t celebrate Thanksgiving either. But their opinion of Thanksgiving is much different. They find it downright admirable that Americans have a holiday where they stop their overworked lives, sit down with family, and give thanks for all the blessings they enjoy. Of course, we’ve never let slip the dirty little secret that after the giving of thanks Americans proceed to indulge in sloth and gluttony on such a scale that no one goes to work the next day.

I think the State Department could get a lot of positive press for the US by playing up our celebration of Thanksgiving. I mean, it’s such a great idea that the Canadians copied us and have their own Thanksgiving day - and their society’s sole raison d’etre is to be the anti-America. Maybe they justify it by loudly pointing out it’s in October.

Of course, without Halloween and Thanksgiving, Americans would just be looking forward to Christmas. Wonder what that would be like? Let me tell you – it ain’t all that great. The picture below was taken in early October in the local Big W (sort of a Walmart) and it only captures a small portion of a massive section.

Yes, the wrapping paper, bows, Santa hats, fake trees, and oodles of special Christmas presents (or “Chrissy prezzies” as they say) have been on the shelves for weeks now. A full two months before the big day! Can anyone say over-commercialism of Christmas? Bah humbug.

Editors’ note: this will be our last entry for a little while because tomorrow we make our second attempt to visit New Caledonia. During the first attempt we ended up at Ayer’s Rock instead (see a map to fully appreciate the magnitude of this detour) but we hope second time’s a charm. South Pacific– here we come!