French press declares Halloween dead

Reuters ^ | 10/31/06

[presidio9]

Halloween, ancient Celtic festival or U.S. marketing gimmick according to your point of view, is dying in France after a short-lived breakthrough, French media reported on Tuesday.

"Halloween pretty much buried," the daily le Monde reported, quoting Benoit Pousset, head of costume company Cesar, who attributed the festival's demise in France to "a cultural reaction linked to the rise of anti-Americanism".

"Our Halloween sales have been falling by half every year since 2002," Franck Mathais of toys retailer La Grande Recre told the newspaper.

A group called "Non a Halloween" set up to fight the trend, which it saw as an unwelcome intrusion fostered by purely commercial interests, even wound itself up last year.

"There was no need for the group to exist any more," former president Arnaud Guyot-Jeannin told Reuters.

Halloween is believed to have originated as a Celtic agricultural festival before becoming associated with the night before the Christian festival of All Saints Day on November 1.

During the 20th century, it became firmly established in the United States, marked by hollowed out pumpkin heads and children dressed as ghosts demanding "Trick or Treat" from passers-by.

Introduced in France during the 1990s, it aroused strong opposition from many who found it artificial and over commercial and the festival never caught on properly. The Catholic church was particularly sceptical.

The daily Le Parisien painted a desolate picture of abandoned pumpkins and sorry displays in isolated restaurant doorways and declared "Halloween is dead".

"Halloween was a marketing gimmick aimed mainly at children. It's a big festival of consumption selling outfits, masks, gadgets and it couldn't last forever," Guyot-Jeannin said.

[RichInOC]

Why is Halloween dead, when so much of the female population dresses up like large black ghosts?

[avg_freeper]

Besides, Halloween interferes with the grand festivities of car burning season in France.

[jdm]

All their cars and buses are burning anyway. Every night is Halloween in France.

[theDentist]

Well, now you can celebrate a night of fear for real, when "students" and "youths from Northern African nations" run riot in and about London, setting fires and murdering innocents on the anniversary of their last spree...

[The Electrician]

Wonder whether that's because they now have their own kinder, gentler version of Halloween courtesy of the masked "youths" who burn cars, buses, and buildings year round...

[popdonnelly]

Why do they need ghosts and witches when they have the government?

[alice_in_bubbaland]

"The French Press Declares France Dead"...there I fixed it.

[holymoly]

A group called "Non a Halloween" set up to fight the trend

Finally, something the French aren't afraid to fight.

[presidio9]

Why is Halloween dead, when so much of the female population dresses up like large black ghosts?

It probably has something to do with the fact that Halloween has been deemed satanic and unholy by what passes for wise men within the Islamic faith. Here in NY, mooselimbs go to be early and turn out the lights to avoid the evil practice of giving candy to children.

[Aquinasfan]

the festival never caught on properly.

Halloween has a proper mode of operation?

[1rudeboy]

Que ? It's Devil's Night everyday in Paris.

[areafiftyone]

Halloween is being replaced with BURN A BUS NIGHT!

[presidio9]

But does anyone celebrate All Saint's Day in Frogland anymore?

[M1Tanker]

Who needs Halloween? France has islamic 'youths' who dress in masks everyday and cause mayhem.

Maybe all France needs is 365 Devil's Nights. Maybe France will not get a choice in this.

To the French "anti-Americans": Will you be anti-Amrerican when you plead for our help to liberate you from these islamofascists? Will you stab your own Armed Forces and Police in the back as you did in the 1940s? Will the new grand mosque in Vichy be your capital building? Will you EVER wake up and see reality????

[Unam Sanctam]

I wish the commercial excesses of Halloween would die out here too.

[Tribune7]

But Devil's Night seems to have become a weekly institution.

[LonePalm]

My French press is much more reliable.

Better taste too.

The signature block says it all.

Il n'y a pas d'honte être français. Il y a seulement l'honte dans rester de français.
(There is no shame in being French. There is only shame in staying French.)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)

[Joy in the Journey]

Isn't that part of the attraction of Halloween--focusing on the dead???

[Aquinasfan]

But does anyone celebrate All Saint's Day in Frogland anymore?

There must be a few left. Sad.