Halloween has always been kind of a bizarre and out of place holiday tradition in Australia, something adopted without much thought from the same Anglo/Northern European traditions brought in wholesale from the Empire that make singing about “Sleigh bells in the snow” of all things (without a hint of irony) in the middle of summer perfectly legitimate expressions of the festive season… in a country usually with a total fire ban in place rather than a warning about blizzards and polar vortexes.
And this year is no different.
The same valiant attempts to give Christmas a uniquely “Australiana” take, like re-writing Christmas carols in the style of Weird Al Yankovic, with covers of “Jingle Bells” in the mid 1990’s that never saw widespread adoption were never even tried with Halloween.
Most Aussies kind of just wait till it’s over, a few plastic skeletons are bought, some assorted decorations are put up, there’s slightly more lollies than usual being bought (however the word “candy” has made significant progress in replacing the word “lollies”) and a balmy spring night is way more conducive for the girls from the office to dress up for the “Spook-Tacular Party” but it is at the end of the day an American holiday we don’t take particularly seriously.
But I for one do enjoy the small reprieve before Christmas, New Year and the month long Summer holiday break. Halloween marks off a time of year when we realise while we were looking at our phones another year basically slipped by barely noticed and it’s once again time to take stock.
That said I still don’t understand why Australia has “Black Friday” when we don’t celebrate Thanksgiving at all.
