Halloween In Australia

In my area, neighbourhood kids are trying their darndest to get Halloween off the ground.

Generally speaking, Australia is pretty lukewarm on the whole Halloween thing. Trick or treating is still a bit of a novelty, at least in my area, and you’re far more likely to hit a house whose occupants stare at you as though you’re crazy. Like most things though, we’re influenced by American culture and so the stores carry the Halloween paraphernalia and the supermarkets highlight products that would do well as ‘treats’ for the door-knockers.

I grew up reading about Halloween as an ‘American tradition’ but never celebrating it. Your fall holiday is our spring conundrum, so there’s no ‘harvest’ feel to this time of the year. It’s getting warmer, not colder. Perhaps that’s got something to do with it. Either way, trick or treating is still a bit of a weird concept down here. Doesn’t stop the local kids trying though!

When we were caught out two years in a row with no candy to give out (I wanted to remind the kids who knocked on my door those years that technically-speaking, Australia doesn’t celebrate Halloween, but instead gave them little boxes of sultanas (raisins) because that was all I had to hand - we were terribly popular for that decision!) I finally gave up. I started making sure I had candy on hand because lets face it, I like being one of the only people on our street who bother. Talented Hubby just shakes his head. He thinks I’m a sucker and that because of the hit-and-miss nature of trick-or-treating down here, the kids all get together and mark sucker-houses on a big map to know which ones to hit the following year, LOL. We don’t go out ourselves. It’s just not worth dragging three kids up and down the surrounding streets and being rejected at 80% of the houses. But the kids get a kick out of handing stuff out. That’s Halloween to us.

We don’t usually get many people. This year I had a random boy on a bike (no costume, unless he was Skater Boy?) trying to cash in on the ‘free stuff’ idea (I later saw him at the supermarket with friends, fistfuls of recently purchased candy of their own), a group of four children (thankfully supervised by their father) who actually made the effort to dress up, three Indian boys from up the street who arrived at 10:15 (again, no costume) and most disturbingly, two young teenage girls (14 or so?) dressed as Playboy Bunnies complete with fishnet stockings, leotards (and cleavage), bunny tails and ears. I did not see their parents anywhere.

So I gave out candy, and probably earned myself the no. 1 spot on the Sucker List. But it was fun :)

And we’ve only got like a garbage can full of leftover candy…sigh.