Absolute Write Blog Chain: Halloween
October’s theme for the Absolute Write Blog Chain is Autumn/Halloween. Of course, as a horror writer, I can’t not discuss Halloween. It inspires such awesome creepy tales and is a good excuse to play with darker culture.
Ana from Expressive World has passed the chain on to me after discussing “what Autumn and nature brings in freefalling words in first language of Portuguese. Translation in brackets.”
It’s good that I want to discuss Halloween because I can’t really discuss autumn, given that in Australia, we’re in spring. Halloween is of course strongly associated with autumn given that in America, where the tradition is most associated, it is autumn at this time. Jack o’ Lanterns are seen in beds of fallen brown leaves and there is numerous other imagery connecting the two.
In Australia, people often criticise those who celebrate or mark Halloween as mimicking an American tradition. The idea is we shouldn’t take part in it because Australia is always just copying the Americans.
I think this idea is generally bullshit. Portraying Australia as culturally dominated by America may be largely true but to argue that we are some how oppressed by this is a bit of an overstatement as well as the fact that removing influences from other cultures would mean we’d basically have no culture as all as Australian culture is largely a myth and just rip offs of previous cultures.
This year we’re hosting a Halloween party at our house on October 31. It’s a Saturday night so perfect night for a party and it’s the night before the first day of National Novel Writing Month. It’s a good chance to engross myself in horror culture and perhaps influence upcoming writing with a darker mood.
I’ve never been much into Halloween as a kid, namely because my father was one of those people who thought it was too American, so I guess I’m catching up on lost time and hoping kids will come and knock on our door this year to collect some treats.
I’ll be sure to post photo a photo on the day too for the 365 challenge looking my zombified best.
The next blogger on the chain is freshhell at Life in Scribbletown
There are 19 Comments to "Absolute Write Blog Chain: Halloween"
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Hey Ben! I hope that you have fun at your party, and besides… Halloween has been around for a heck of a lot longer than what America has been… though they called it something different (Samhain) and the White English males had to change it (like everything else) — the traditions are/were still very much the same. So take comfort in knowing that it’s not actually An American holiday at all, that’s just what they want you to think
I live in Canada so I can totally relate for we too struggle with our cultural identity and is greatly influenced by American customs. Good post, very insightful.
Hey ben,
Hope Halloween is good for you people down in Melbourne and am totally looking forward to pictures of zombie-ben
Jordan Humphreys´s last blog ..Back with NaNoWriMo & More
It amazes me the unwarranted disdain some people have for America; it baffles me. Halloween is world-wide. Enjoy it. I am!
Besides, why hate on Halloween? There’s candy!
John Pender´s last blog ..Dollar Store Books
Hey Ben,
It’s amazing how a worldwide annual holiday can be seen as threatening to another country, when it is experienced differently by people in different cultures all over the world. I think at the end of the day it is your choice to make with it what you will, and enjoy the experience in whatever form you feel. Have a wonderful party!
All Hallow’s Eve has always been one of my favourite holidays, and it has nothing to do with the Americans, or the candy, and everything to do with the spirit world.
Can’t wait to see the picture of zombiefied Ben!
Carol´s last blog ..Melancholy Monday
Funny, we always think of Australians celebrating Christmas in Summer, but never thought about you guys celebrating Halloween in Spring.
I love Halloween. Granted, I don’t really celebrate it, because I don’t socialise much but if I could have a halloween party with fellow readers/writers, that would be grand. Still, I enjoy walking past all the Halloween stuff in the shops, and enjoy it when a skeleton crawls towards me, or a witch cackles…yes, it’s commercial, but it’s also fun, and if we actually take the time to research its history, it’s totally fascinating as to how many different myths and beliefs and traditions there are for Halloween.
Lost Wanderer´s last blog ..Do you just write your book or your world?
My main gripe with Hallowe’en is that *not* a worldwide holiday – it is a seasonal holiday, so we are allowing ourselves to be wrongfully influenced by American Tradition, by observing on the 31st when Americans do. We should actually be celebrating Beltane at this time of year, fertility, relationships, committment and all of that stuff – not the darker bits. In the Southern Hemisphere Hallowe’en or Samhain falls in April and that’s when we’ve always observed it. That for us is when the veil between the two worlds is thinnest.
And it’s just another commercialised holiday (which I would have thought prickled your socialist consciousness!) John Pender – it is not all about candy (just like Christmas was never intended to be all about presents) – it was meant to observe and remember those who are no longer for us. Traditional Samhain activities include lighting candles to remember those who have passed over. Maybe you can remember that as your gorging yourself with sugar.
Sorry to be a complete naysayer but to me it *is* just blind following.
Jodi Cleghorn´s last blog ..#22 City Morning Views
Jodi: I admit that I know nothing about the actual origins of Halloween as I mainly do celebrate it for just the fun of it because I’m into horror and scary things.
Like Christmas, and really anything, things in capitalist society are always produced for profit so in a sense, yes, these holidays are commercialised but as nearly everything is commercialised, it’s a bit hard to avoid it. I personally don’t feel we’re committing any sin by buying into this as the real crime is with those who profit off this not those who choose to buy the stuff.
In fact, I think people are quite right to want things and to be able to earn enough to enjoy as much of their lives as possible. And wanting these things can motivate workers to fight for better wages and conditions to enjoy these holidays.
Of course, this is no disrespect to those who choose to celebrate these holidays in their traditional capacities because socialists are also for freedom of religion and other beliefs.
I’ll share some other time the origins of Hallowe’en because I think you’d get a real kick out of them and it would add some additional interesting flavour to your horror writing.
I find it hard to stomach and of the commericalised holidays. While you say people have the right to enjoy, the capitalist machine hoodwinks/guilts people into spending beyond their means, so it becomes the consumers burden and the industrialists boon. Granted no one is going to go broke having fun on Hallowe’en – getting back to the original point.
My main thrust was – it is cool (and fun) to celebrate Hallowe’en if that’s what you want to do (I didn’t stop my son dressing up last year with friends and going trick or treating because it’s something he really wanted to do) but doing it in October *is* following the American example because it is a seaonable holiday (pumpkins, apples etc) and given my continual flirtation with paganism annoyed and fed up with having to follow a Northern Hemisphere blue print (as if that is the only hemisphere in the world)
OK – off my soap box. I spend all day worried that I’d been a right pain the arse by leaving the previous comment.
Jodi Cleghorn´s last blog ..#23 Fingers of God
If you thought you were a pain in the arse for the comment, you might get a mighty shock at some of the political meetings I go to!
I guess the thing with people spending beyond their means is the fact that they shouldn’t have to, that they should have more. Hence why when people want more, they often fight for it.
But I find the seasonal thing very interesting and it makes a lot of sense. I’d never thought of it that way. I guess it’s a Northern Example more than an American example because other Northern cultures would practice it that way too.
I think it’s a holiday more associated with this side of the world because its symbols mesh with the harvest. This is the time of year (over here) when pumpkins are ready so carving a pumpkin is done now or never. It merges into the older celebrations of All Hallow’s Eve in which spirits roam the earth. After I stopped trick-or-treating, the holiday lost a lot of meaning until I had children. Now, we are all about costumes and trick-or-treating and candy….
Claudia´s last blog ..The Man with the Pot on his Head
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Good on you for bucking common thought and celebrating anyway. Halloween is a great time to express ourselves and a wonderful time for kids. Who cares where it came from or who participates? That type of thinking has no bearing on a fun way to celebrate the strange!
Enjoy Halloween this year! Dress up, get crazy, have fun!
Aimee Laine´s last blog ..October Blog Chain | Absolute Write
Hey Ben, the thought of you as a Zombie cracked me up. Have the best party! I remember as a Catholic kid that it was All Saints Day, the following day and that puts yet another slant on it. Love your blog, both my cousin and her husband are very left and Vic is high up in the ACTU. She was with the Communist Party and is well loved and respected in our family regardless of her poltical views. Passion and authenticity inspire people. Put your own unique slant on Halloween and have a ball!
We Australians do not need dark celebrations from other cultures.
We definitely do not need American influence in our culture & America has no culture of it’s own.
Go the British empire & yes we comefrom free settler stock.
As if our culture isn’t influenced from America, as if we have our own culture as well anyway. The British Empire? Where the blood never dried?
And free settlers? Don’t you mean white people who committed genocide against Aboriginals?
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