Well, I'd like to add a
writeup to the long list of writeups above I would like to
node about
Halloween in
Austria and
Germany. I live in
Austria, a small county in the
middle of
Europe, rather
useless actually, and what I can say about Halloween in
Germany is what I've seen on
TV (
yes, we do have television in Austria, believe it or not).
Halloween has been around for a very long time in America I suppose, but in the last years, some people started thinking about introducing Halloween here too. I really don't have a problem with people having fun on Halloween and I don't say I do not like the idea, but the whole thing is so different here than in the USA. No, I have never been to the USA, but people who are "celebrating" Halloween here haven't either.
I have to admit that I don't really know, but I believe that people in America are for the most part little children, who do really enjoy Halloween because it is Halloween. Now the people here don't seem to really enjoy it, they just seem to do it, because it's american (I don't want to say I don't like american people, but here in Austria and perhaps Germany too, anything that's american seems to be "cool"). So while children in America like going from house to house, and perhaps the older people like to shock their friends or whatever, the children here think, "Hey. Is that American?! WOW THIS IS AMERICAN! WHEE I HAVE TO DO THIS", and the older people (including the people on television, what comes to my mind at the moment is MTV Germany) probably think, "Hey, I'm doing this, because it's american but I don't want to admit it".
Of course, not everybody is thinking the same, but the people celebrating Halloween really seem to have this opinion on it. But actually it's funny to see how all these people make fun of themselves. ;)