Pardon my ignorance, but is Halloween really a thing in Europe?
It goes up and down a bit, but sadly, yes.
I was actually having a discussion about this on a Belgian political forum and was looking for a place to vent, so thanks for the opening.
Yes, it absolutely is. Due to American TV and movies, there's been an enormous Americanization of large parts of Western Europe's culture. I was actually arguing "against" the cultural value of Halloween in Belgium, and the dips...I mean, the person arguing the other side, said that it was important because trick-or-treating allowed children to go out, make plans, meet the neighbours. He seemed to genuinely believe "trick-or-treating and going around dressed up" didn't exist here before Halloween came around. Which just goes to show local traditions are really disappearing at an alarming rate and being replaced with easy American "holidays" geared towards commercialism. The combination of peer pressure, what children see on tv, and how Halloween is pushed by shops, means it's become one of the biggest holidays as far as sales go over the past 20 years.
Now, I don't mind Halloween in and of itself. It's a perfectly fine tradition. Around here (depending on the region a bit), we had other traditions surrounding the 1st of November (All Saints) and 2nd of November (All Souls) though, and Saint Martin the 11th; trick-or-treating and dressing up was done on Epiphany (6th of January) or New Year's Day. Dressing up as all kinds of stuff was for Carnival.
Back when I was in primary school, we had maybe one or two hours at school spent on Halloween - in a "we celebrate like
this, but in some parts they celebrate like
that" sort of way. Heck, I remember a lesson where we had to learn the difference between Halloween, Cinqo de Mayo, Bakr-Eid, and various other "festivals from around the world". Now schools devote weeks to Halloween, with Halloween-themed classes, a dressing up party, Halloween-themed handicrafts,...
Much like Santa, which is a bastardized version of our Saint Nicholas, Halloween is an American cultural thing replacing local customs and traditions, in the ever-growing monocultural Western world, and it's a damn shame.