Wednesday, November 01, 2006

 

Halloween versus Reformation Day

I got trick or treating kids on my doorstep tonight. First time ever I had trick or treating kids. Halloween has gradually taken hold in Germany in the last eight years or so. In the 1970s and 1980s it was totally unknown - and even as late as 1994, I had to import decorations for a Halloween party from the US.

Of course, the spread of Halloween is annoying the usual suspects. The Catholic church says it's a pagan festival, the Lutheran church says it's a pagan festival and also supplants Reformation Day (i.e. day when Luther nailed thesises to Wittenberg church door), which also happens to be on October 31st. Maybe nailing thesises to church doors was Luther's version of trick or treating? Xenophobiacs see Halloween as yet more evidence of creeping Americanization, which will certainly bring about the end of civilization as we know it. Spoilsports, one and all.

The reason why Halloween took hold in Germany is simply because it is fun. People of all ages get to dress-up and decorate the house all spooky, kids get to go round from house to house and collect candy. Frankly, I'm amazed that it took so long to show up over here. The Halloween party I threw back in 1994 was a pioneering event - it was the first one ever in the circles I moved in back then. And it was great fun.

I suspect that the churches don't like people having fun. Besides, it's no wonder that Reformation Day is being eclipsed by Halloween, because Reformation Day is rather dull. There's no party, no celebration beyond a church service (if you're lucky) - hell, it's not even a public holiday in most of Germany. Nor is Reformation Day a genuine religious festival - it's just a ritualized rememberance of a historical event, much like all those solemn marches in rememberance of the war dead. Maybe they ought to commemorate Reformation Day by nailing complaints to church doors - that might get the kiddies interested.

As for trick or treating, that practice first took hold in those parts of Germany, which didn't have a native local tradition of kids going around on a certain day in autumn/winter and collect small presents from neighbours. Because the kids in those areas were missing out on something that their peers living elsewhere had. Now in my area, we do have a local tradition called "Nikolauslaufen", which is basically like trick or treating, except that it's done on St. Nicholas Day (December 6th). I know that other areas do something similar on St. Martin's Day (sometime in November). Hence, our local kids didn't really need Halloween to get free candy. But this year, some of the kids from the neighbourhood apparently thought, "Why settle for free candy once a year, if you can have it twice?" and decided to go trick or treating.

Since I didn't expect trick or treaters, I was a little gobsmacked to find five little boys (two of them I knew) on my doorstep. I didn't have any Halloween candy (which you can buy in bigger supermarkets) at hand. So I thought, "Okay, what can I give them?" My first impulse was, fetch the chocolate bowl (full of mini-chocolate bars) from the living room table and distribute the contents amongst the kids. But then I remembered that the bowl in the living room contained several bars of alcohol-flavoured chocolate, which wouldn't go down too well with the parents of the kids (I accidentally passed out alcohol-flavoured chocolate in St. Nicholas Day once and realized my mistake just in time). So I ran into the cellar, got a new package of non-alcoholic chocolate bars and distributed it amongst the four little boys.

posted by Cora link 00:47