As strange as this may sound to some people (especially people in the North American area, like Canada and the US who have grown up with it - I don’t know if they do in Europe or anywhere else) I have never experienced a Halloween before. Back home in Australia it is literally a non-event. It is printed on every calendar sold in the country, perhaps with the exception of the small-time charity calendars, who knows? However, even though everyone knows about it, about when it is and what people in some countries do - it is not celebrated at all in Australia. In fact, in my entire eighteen-years of life I can only remember two instances of it having any significance what so ever:

Once trick or treaters came to our door, and when I say once I mean only one group on only one year of my entire life. It was a pair of young boys in their school uniforms with plastic masks on, and a plastic bag. Luckily I had been to a birthday party recently and hence had candy to give out, but that’s all. A few years after, my friends and I decided to try out this Halloween trick or treating thing, just to see what we could get - between us all we got a packet of 2-minute noodles, an apple, some mints and $2 to share between the five of us… Let’s just say that it wasn’t a very bountiful harvest!

That was all my Halloween experience right there for you. However, this year was different. Because I am living in Canada at the moment, I got to see how the Canadians do their Halloweens, and trust me it was pretty exciting for me!! I wont go into details to explain exactly what I did, but I will point out a few of the interesting things that I noticed along the way, although I personally think that most people MUST have thought about all this at one point or another themselves.

During Halloween parents encourage their children to approach complete strangers and accept candy from them. Now I realise that this is the whole fun of the night for young children, some even make it their nights ambition to get as much candy as physically possible, but it does seem rather odd to me. Throughout my entire childhood I was bombarded with the “Stranger Danger” philosiphy, and one of the main points of this is do not talk to strange adults and do not accept candy from them!! When I was at primary school we actually watched a video that showed us a child (an actor, obviously) be approached by an adult, offered candy and then kidnapped - it is just not something you do, and everyone knows it! However, on Halloween children are taught to run up to a complete stranger’s door and practically beg for candy, and to continue doing this for a few hours, and what’s more, they’re often encouraged to approach strangers in costume, who are thus normally scary to the child and hence they wouldn’t approach them! Children are being told to approach people they’re naturally scared of here!! In fact, I even saw some parents speaking to their children who had had enough and wanted to go home, forcing them to keep going to get more candy - “Just one more house”. Now I realise they do this because they want their children to have the best possible experience with Halloween, which, of course, equals seventeen bags full of candy, but it just seems rather odd, and I would assume that a few children get left with mixed ideas from their parents. I even heard some children talking about coming out and doing it again tomorrow night - might be a little more dangerous on a night without so many people on the streets.

Another thing that seems rather counter-productive about the whole Halloween tradition is the mountains of candy that are amassed by each child over the course of the night. Parents all over the world have a huge fight on their hands when they want their children to put down the chocolate and move away from the lollypops, and to come and sit down and eat their vegetables. Candy is generally given as a sometimes treat, often for good behaviour, but on Halloween the children are given piles and piles of candy that, I would assume, would just make it all that much more difficult for parents to try to keep their children away from the stuff!

With all that said, though, I went trick or treating with my three-year-old cousin Shannon and I had an absolute blast. Both while I was walking Shannon up to the door to ask these strangers for candy, and when I was hanging back with the other adults watching their children from a distance (although many children were set out through the neighbourhood alone - natural with age, though, I suppose)… I had a great time and I want to know why we don’t celebrate it back home!