For the past few years, the French have been feeling pretty smug around la Toussaint. "Halloween is gone for good," they gloat. "It wasn't a French holiday to begin with--it couldn't have lasted," they shrug, pointing to bland shop windows that used to be filled with gaping jack-o-lantern grins and spindly spider legs in woolly webs come October. Even store chains like Monoprix have started to skimp on the Halloween déco, content to fill their seasonal aisles instead with Christmas-themed candy and decorations as soon as the weather turns cool. With the exception of the odd chocolatier's--or Le Bon Marché's--displays of plump pumpkin-shaped chocolates, Halloween could almost go unnoticed now. Almost.Because what the French haven't completely forgotten is the magic of make-believe. Wobbly toddlers turned ladybugs and wild Indians are led by the hands of proud parents to their crèches' Halloween parties, where even the staff has been transformed into witches and devils. Older Parisians stop the children on the street to compliment their costumes and joke with them, no doubt remembering costumed goûters d'anniversaire of yore.
So maybe with a less commercial version of Halloween, the French, young and old, will stop seeing the holiday as a capitalist intrusion and more as what it always has been: a good excuse to dress up and eat candy--pumpkin-shaped or not.
Drew Barrymore as Gertie [Online image] 1982.
