Halloween – I Don’t get it

Halloween, I don’t get it.  Kids, of various ages, are dressing in “spooky” costumes, walking the streets, knocking on the doors of people they don’t know and taking lollies (I’m not going to call it candy) from complete strangers.

When we grew up, Halloween was a strange American tradition we saw in movies like E.T.  It’s probably only really taken off here in Australia over the last 10 years or so.  The first time we had kids knock on the front door and yell “Trick or Treat” I asked them if they were American.  When they said “no” I asked why they were doing this, to which they answered “to get free lollies”. 

Those kids had no idea what I was talking about when I told them we had no “treats” so they’d better try and trick me, so I asked them to tell me about the tradition of Halloween and where it came from.  They couldn’t do that either.

Of course we don’t want to be the Halloween grinch, so these days we have a bowl of lollies at the front door for the “trick or treaters”, and to avoid the possibility of a rotten egg “trick” being thrown at the house, but I still don’t get why Australia has taken on the American Halloween tradition, when it has no relevance here.

I also wonder about the logistics of the Halloween “trick or treaters”.  What would happen if everyone went out to “trick or treat” on Halloween night, that would leave no-one to answer the door and hand out the treats?

Anyway, that was just a short blog with my thoughts on Halloween. 

I’d better go now, there are kids knocking on the door…