Redeem now - When I first lived in France in 1998 no one I knew celebrated Halloween which shocked me.
- By 2013 there were Halloween themed bags of candy for kids, and people wearing make up.
- In 2018 I threw a Halloween party and everyone came in full costumes.
While studying in northern France in 1998, I didn't expect to celebrate Thanksgiving, but I was shocked to encounter French ignorance of Halloween, my favorite spooky holiday. This explained the absence of costumes, decorations, and candy corn, which compounded my culture shock.
By the time my French partner and I moved back to France in 2008, I was a parent. I wanted to keep our American traditions alive, but finding not much more than carving pumpkins and a meager Halloween display in the grocery store, I scoured the internet for recipes and DIY decorations.
The next time we lived in France, in 2013, there were at least Halloween-themed bags of candy and some make-up, but still nothing like the witchy, ghostly explosion back home.
Halloween in French history
Though most French people don't know it, the Druids of Gaul (northern France, Belgium, and some of Germany) had a holiday similar to the Irish Celtic new year Samhain called Samonios in which hearths were rekindled with sacred New Year fires.
In the 15th century, people in certain areas of northern France were known to have carved scary faces into hollowed-out beetroots and put candles in them to scare passersby in late October, a call back to the turnip jack-o-lanterns of Samhain in Ireland.
Instead of pumpkins, the more recognizable sign of the end of October in France is the chrysanthemum since November 1st is Toussaint, or All Saints Day. Toussaint is considered a sacred day for Catholics who gather in cemeteries all over the country to clean their ancestors' tombs and redecorate them with potted mums. Hallowe'en — a contraction of "hallows even" in English — is simply the eve of this solemn family gathering.
The first glimpses French folks had of the American version of Halloween were at Disneyland Paris and on the French-dubbed Halloween episodes of their favorite American TV shows "Les Simpsons" and "Friends," or in the horror film series "Halloween."
But what truly launched Halloween in France was a 90s campaign for an orange Ola phone marketed by France Télécom in which the French were invited to celebrate "Olaween." They lined up 8,000 free pumpkins on the Trocadero lawns across from the Eiffel Tower. Coca-Cola started its own marketing campaign around the same time, as did several French candy makers.
Do French people celebrate Halloween today?
In 2018, Radio France reported that after an initial boom from 1997 to 2002, the French, who consider themselves a nostalgic people, unimpressed by holidays that don't seem to celebrate anything meaningful and nothing other than capitalism, were so turned off by the commercialization of Halloween — and the idea that it was a celebration of gore and "camelote" (junk) — that interest began to wane.
That hasn't been my experience. We threw our first bona fide French Halloween party in 2015. There were 50 people. Everyone wore a costume, and nearly everyone brought a creepy culinary creation to share — a brain cake, witch finger cookies, a bloody arm jelly roll complete with a severed hand, and jack-o-lantern clementines. All the guests were intrigued and disgusted by our Halloween mystery boxes containing witches' teeth (unpopped popcorn), maggots (slimy rice), demon fingernails (sliced almonds), and they played along, giggling and guessing.
Since 2013, Saint-Maime, near where we live in the south of France, has been celebrating Halloween as a community. Villagers decorate their homes or turn their yards into cemeteries, and there are multiple routes for candy hunting, a scary one for older kids and a milder one for tots where everyone shouts "un bonbon ou un sort" French for Trick-or-Treat.
This year, our neighborhood variety store already feels like a haunted house with its motion-activated scarecrows and flying grim reapers, its yard signs warning of imminent paranormal danger — it's true that French Halloween leans harder on the grim and gory, witches and demons beating out superheroes or fluffy bunnies.
While I agree that the jack-o-lantern won't be eclipsing the chrysanthemum any time soon, Halloween is indeed alive and kicking in France.
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