Yesterday I went to an English supermarket in Paris and picked up two adorable little pumpkins. They even had stickers detailing in French how to make a Jack-o-Lantern. A French woman at the checkout line asked me what they were for.
“Halloween,” I said.
“Do you eat them?” she replied.
The French really, really, want to eat the pumpkin. Because they’re new at this Halloween thing, and have their own cult of culinary craft, I’ll forgive them. Besides, they’ve come a long way since I was a student in 1995, when only a few American bar ads mentioned Halloween. My friends and I, dedicated Halloween fans, knew there’d be no trick-or-treating in this town of secured buildings, so we dressed up and headed to a night-club, sure that we’d find a party there. My friend was dressed as a ballroom dancer in a long gown and glittery eyes, a number pinned to her back. I was a dandy, with a fake moustache and my hair tucked under a top hat. My roommate decided to be a ‘French Girl’, and thus wore a striped shirt, beret, red scarf, and black fishnet stockings. By the looks of the folks in the Metro, I don’t think anyone realised we were in costume. The only other Halloweeners we saw, a group of vampires and witches, stared at us silently. It’s a bit difficult to explain to someone how, when you’re expected to wear a costume every Halloween of your life in America (if not, you’re a bore), that one must get a little more creative than the witch-vampire-zombie-monster schtick.
Since they didn’t grow up carving Jack-o-Lanterns and eating caramel apples, I guess I can excuse them for obsessing about Halloween’s cultural significance and historical roots. I do, however, get patriotically defensive when I hear them accuse Americans of using Halloween to destroy their culture with our commercialism. Whoa horsies! Can’t we all just get along? Then again, the French tend to take themselves and their dead rather seriously on November 1st (All Saints’ Day), so it must raise their hackles a bit to have a bunch of strange goons running around until dawn the night before, foam tombstones with tasteless epitaphs written on them decorating our yards. But Halloween is about fun, fall leaves, spooky haunted houses, ‘The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown’, costumes made from stuff in grandma’s closet, trick-or-treating, pillowcases full of candy…makes me homesick for candycorn!
