It’s Halloween. A decade ago I wouldn’t have known that, but in the past 10 years, not only have I been exposed to daily American culture through the Internet, but Halloween has become an Australian festival (if festival is the right word).
I first glimpsed some children trick or treating in my neighbourhood about six years ago. At the time, I had a toddler who was totally unimplicated in that sort of behaviour, so I could afford to think of it purely in a critical way, as the importation of an American custom — as cultural imperialism.
Nowadays, I have a child who enjoys dressing up, going door to door and getting sweets. I enjoy his enjoyment. I enjoy seeing the gangs of kids, always accompanied by an adult or two, roaming the neighbourhood in costume on Halloween.
In the back of my mind, I still think it’s cultural imperialism, not to mention seasonal imperialism — Halloween is very much an autumnal festival (or Fall, as the Americans say.) The English have municipally-run bonfires and fireworks at this time of year. I wonder why Australia didn’t stick with Guy Fawkes night (at least there’s some historical continuity in relation to the Westminster system of parliament and it’s a rebel’s story) or a wintry Bonfire Night celebration — a communal get-together that’s not based around commercial junk food.
But the Halloween horse has bolted, at least in our neck of the woods.
Halloween seems to be big here in England. It may be “cultural imperialism” but I think that for the most part people tend to embrace any excuse for a party. Indeed here in Bristol people don’t need much of an excuse to get into fancy dress and Halloween is pretty much all about dressing silly and having a bit of fun.
Oh, and I’m shitty because I can’t go to one of my mates Halloween parties tonight because of crazy flight times.
Given that Guy Fawkes is about setting fire to people, and Halloween is about demons getting loose in the night, I am left to marvel at the human ability to upend sad stuff and make it merry.
In some ways it is all a bit like the Mexican Day of the Dead, which is where Halloween is most obviously inverted.
I have a 3 year old. 1 or 2 years and I’m sure I’ll be dressing up with him and walking the street. There will however be legions of grumpy plonkers writing in to the west australian about it.
And Howard Sattler pontificating about it and predictinbg that this is a pedophile’s wet dream or words to that effect.
Can we arrange for Cinco de Mayo to be celebrated in Oz? I liked that holiday when I was in LA as it seemed a grand excuse just to drink margaritas.
I still find the entire Halloween thing odd especially when people tell me that people go around trick or treating in their neighbourhoods, something I’ve never seen or experienced. Maybe it’s just where I live.
Remember when we were kids, there used to be a thing called Cracker Night. Everyone would light big bonfires in the local park, and set of all sorts of fireworks around them. There were always lots of parents on hand, at least where I was. Then the government seized on a populist wedge policy, cancelled the whole thing, and made fireworks illegal.
Sure, it was the Queens Birthday too, but who gave a rodent’s arse about that? It was just a holiday - and it was Cracker Night!
Remember Rainbow Balls soaring up into the sky? Remember those twirly things that used to spin around on the ground? Remember all the various sizes of bungers that you could get, all the way down to Penny Farthings and then later those little Throwdowns (filled with tiny silicon pebbles)? Remember the smell as a big cloud of smoke wafter over the whole neighbourhood?
That was MY Holloween… Back in the day.
Oh, so THAT’S why a bunch of kids knocked on my door this evening! By the time I got to the door they’d given up waiting and were back off down the stairs. I didn’t even think of Halloween! I’ve been here (inner city Melbourne) for a number of years now and this is the first time the issue has arisen …
Some places in Australia still do bonfire night — here’s one in Traralgon on 10 November.
Neighbourhood kids came around. I said no, they kept banging on the door, and I was going to return from the recesses of the house with vodka and ciggies, but they’d left. Probably fortunately.
Nobody seems prepared to do a trick, which I thought was supposed to be part of the whole extortion scheme. The seppos soap up your windows, toilet paper your garden, shaving soap your car or occasionally beat you senseless with a golf club. In return, you can hide a razor blade in an apple (glad that’s an urban legend), lick all the boiled sweets before handing them out, or only buy lollies you like that nobody else does (sour gummy worms? Redskins?).
My kids just aren’t that interested in it. We had the kiddie across the road knock on the door (accompanied by parent) who got something from the miserly emergency stash on top of the piano, but since they weren’t prepared to play a trick, I didn’t feel too bad about the substandard rewards.
“Can we arrange for Cinco de Mayo to be celebrated in Oz? ”
Brilliant idea - I’m going to have beer right now to help me think about it.
Parties on the beach ,margaritas for all.
It also has the benefit of being a very obscure reason for a quiet drink and the wearing of skimpy clothes .
from the Wiki article -” For the most part the celebrations combine food, lots of alcohol, music and dancing.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinco_de_Mayo
They (ok - one little girl and her faintly embarrassed dad) descended upon my doorstep tonight too - first time ever.
It’s a fun kids thing. So that’s OK. The American stuff I hate has more to do with bombing & shooting other countries kids to get at their oil etc.
It’s different if you have a child. As suz says, you enjoy their enjoyment. Me, I’m not that keen on it, but you’d just look like an idiot explaining cultural imperialism to a child.
Everyone:
So we gave up Guy Fawkes Night because of government bullying and because of the silly political correctness …. all without a whimper …. and what did we get in return? Hally-bloody-ween! I want a refund! Of course there should have been more attention to safety but Guy Fawkes Night did less harm than Halloween; kids were less at risk; families were more involved. [Not much fun, though, for dogs with their sensitive hearing].
David Tiley:
Interesting point you made there: comparing Day Of The Dead with Guy Fawkes Night and Halloween.
I expect that some people will let off fireworks on November 24th.
Well for my 2 bobs worth I ran across this Halloween crap when I was living in Sydney a few years ago,I just told em I was not a dumb yank,but its typical of the way things go in OZ we imitate the Yanks Christ knows why.
The Breakfast Lib on 6pr must be getting worried as they had Bolta on for his usual rant,and he (the Breakfast Guy) was moaning about Rudd and how every one cant seethrough him and the usual crap,you should have a listen Frank,mind you the ABC is that insipid in Perth you have to wonder
BOOOOOO!!!
(btw, Hallowe’en is sort of Irish* in origin, so y’all can enjoy it in good conscience, without fear of the American cultural jack(o’lantern)boot. (And speaking of which, you wouldn’t *believe* what I’d have to tell you about Cinco de Mayo…)
* - if you’re doing the bonfires, then you’ve got at least part of the Irish thing going on… and as long as you’ve got pumpkins, why waste ‘em?
BOOOOOO!! Have fun!
Half a dozen aboriginal kids turned up in at our unit in Broome tonight. They left empty handed because we weren’t expecting little visitors. One world now. It’s planet Hollywood.
“The Breakfast Lib on 6pr must be getting worried as they had Bolta on for his usual rant,and he (the Breakfast Guy) was moaning about Rudd and how every one cant seethrough him and the usual crap,’
6 p.r. is covert Liberal Party H.Q. of course most of them will deny it,apart from Georgey G of course.But the rest are as transparent as a pane of glass.Even the ones with half a brain have joined the dark side.
The only decent person on PR is Steve Gordon on the weekends - he hates Howard
Bob Maumill is a bit of a strange one - considering his friendships with Burke, Grill, Kevin Reynolds and Norm Malborough.
I’ve always said that 6PR stands for 6 Perth Rednecks.
totally agree, suz.
there are some parents with kids over 12/13 - who are hardline and don’t do halloween - but kids younger, have now grown up with up ‘trick or treating’ - very few of their peers would now not be allowed to participate.
i threw together a zombie costume this arvo - for parents entering this phase - it’s the way easiest of all costumes to bung together, when you have forgotten completely and have nothing else.
one particular street has the become the main focus of halloween in the local area - about 1000 kids and parents (many who dress up ) going up and back for a couple of hours - with about 30/40 houses participating - and the amount of teens, going around the neighbourhood in costume, seems to be more each year.
and wot a bunch of freaking sugar addicts they all are - sackfuls arent enough..”just a few more houses - what about down this street??” & the hangover after a big trick or treat session is pretty awful.
some parents were giving out ‘poisoned apples’ & spooky juice today. i gave out carrots as a ‘trick’ last year. funnily enough, the kids all walked off eating them - when too many lollies, is just too many lollies.
j_ack o’lantern_p_z:
It’s a quaint native custom in the USA and I’m old enough to remember when it was, along with July Fourth and the Thanksgiving feast, an enjoyable and special part of the lives of expatriate Americans in various parts of Australia.
The hostility to it in Australia right now has nothing to do with Americans having fun nor with All Souls’ Day nor All Hallow’s Eve but with yet another uninvited foreign intrusion shoved down our throats by snake-oil salesmen and by people here who are increasingly seen a collaborators. [Thank you kaaindly, Mr Bush].
Anyway …. BOOO!! -((ww
ww)) [please rotate face to fit typeface pumpkin]
If I were doorknocked I’d give both a trick and a treat.
Trick: a rant about how Australian culture is still significantly different from American culture and how adopting another country’s traditions diminishes the importance of our own.
Treat: Organic Fuji apples are the only thing I have in plentiful supply.
I get annoyed as much as the next person by teenagers dressed in half arsed costumes of bin bags with eye holes cut out pounding on my door and demanding chocolate bars. However, I disagree that we should not do Halloween because it is considered cultural imperialism. Christmas is a european cultural import - perhaps we should avoid this example of cultural imperialism as well. As for seasonal imperialism - Christmas has to be the ultimate example as we sweat over roast turkeys and exchange cards with snow and robins on them!
I went round the neighbourhood with my five year old this evening and met the people who live around me and had a wonderful time. Halloween is a great community building exercise. It feels odd because it is new. Also, its simple enough to avoid by not answering the door if you choose not to participate.
why “cracker night” was finally done away with:
every year without fail, some kids would blow their fingers/hand/face off or catch on fire etc.
and boys would blow up every twentieth letterbox in the street with thunders (thicker than your thumb) or blow up a kitten/puppy.
it was injury/vandalism headlines every year after cracker night. and they were pretty good fireworks, as you said gandhi - those ’skyrockets’ went up along way! i loved cracker night too.
keating used ‘cracker night’ describing hewson, bishop etc. in one his speeches. vaguely remember it.
Bah! Humbug!
Oops, wrong invented tradition!
Funny that the people who should cultural imperialism are usually the first down the pub on St Pat’s day.
Oh, it’s only *American* cultural imperialism we have to worry about. Gotcha.
“Bah! Humbug!”
We’ll be seeing you in due time, Bahnisch.
Would`nt Guy Fawkes Night be during total fire ban in Australia ?
Huckle, Christmas wasn’t so much imported as carried along with the First Fleet and goes hand in glove with the whole “Christianity” thing. I try to refrain from going overboard at Christmas time and I consider myself more Christian than not. Halloween, though, is imported rather than transplanted; it is nothing more than a bizarre American tradition which we’ve seen on television and decided that it was an alright enough idea.
“Halloween is a great community building exercise. ”
I’m a well-established empty-nester, and the unrelated child who lived with us for five years has now moved on — so I was quite pleased to have gangs of excited children knocking on the door, happy to be complimented on their costumes and teased with threats of spinach. Since we’re generally doing our best to emulate US hyper-individualism, I’m inclined to embrace any tradition that actually gets neighbours talking to each other. (Some of tonights cheerful mendicants I’d only met once before, when I went door-knocking for the Red Cross a couple of months ago.)
Sam, the roots of Halloween are actually in the much older Celtic festival of Samhain, which may be partly what Kerryn above is referring to.
(And apropos whose comment, just quietly, the Australians who go down the pub on St Pat’s Day are mostly of Irish extraction themselves. It’s hardly the same thing as being culturally invaded when one’s forebears brought ye olde customs here with them in the first place. Also, it’s hardly as if Ireland is one of the world’s most powerful nations.)
I’m grumpy because I stocked up on mini Mars Bars and Crunchies specially, and all I saw was one small Darth Vader — and he was working the other side of the street.
Some edjumacational ‘ween reading.
http://www.csicop.org/si/2007-04/efthimou.html
Whaddya mean ‘cultural imperialism’?
Kids all over the world wanna sweetie.
I’m sure if you head for the hills with a shotgun and can of beans the nasty Mericans won’t steal your mind.
BTW, I heard there are Amercians on teh interwebs too! Better stick to the .au domain to be safe.
Now pardon me while I go and get an Italian Espresso, dine on Japanese ramen for lunch, teach some Australian customs to workers from 8 different nations, converse with them in a patois of our respective languages, followed up by an evening of some US TV programming and maybe a British film.
And all of it free from angst about cultural imperalists or multicultural panics!
I just walked through the pubby/clubby district of Bristol and it looks as though Halloween is going to make for a huge night out. The students seem to be well up for it.
No, it’s only imperialism if it comes from an empire, which we tend to euphemise as “superpowers” these days.
Ireland is a diaspora, which is a whole ‘nother thing.
I bought a huge supply of sweets this year after running out early in the evening last year. Once again the little buggers cleaned me out and I can’t sit here and gorge on chocolate bars all day.
I didn’t like Halloween when it first started happening in the neighbourhood but I’ve grown to like it. It’s enjoyable seeing families with prams, little and teenage kids, wandering the streets and having fun.
Kerryn:
St Patrick’s Day is celebrated in Australia because of our important Irish heritage - much of the slave labour that built Britain’s colonies in Australia came from Irish rebels and political prisoners.
Americans celebrate St Patrick’s Day too but for very very different reasons.
No cultural imperialism involved.
Jo:
Despite all the injuries, the safety issues around Guy Fawkes Night were ignored by the powers-that-be for decades.
Crackers were banned and Guy Fawkes Night abolished only when it became obvious that there was a potential threat of nasty people buying huge quantities of big crackers, removing the gunpowder from them and building a bomb that would have made Guido Fawkes and the other original Gunpowder Plotters proud.
Jo:
Sorry, paediatric surgeons did NOT ignore the Guy Fawkes Night injuries but although they were influential in their own way, they were not the political authorities who could have resolved the safety issues without abolishing the folk celebration..
Given Halloween does originate from Samhain, a quintissentially Irish/Celtic festival, it would be nice to see Australians, with so much Irish heritage, embracing it and turning it into what we think is authentic. Christmas, in the wrong season, for the wrong reasons, with ridiculous ‘white christmas’ trimmings and the start of ‘christmas’ sales 4 months beforehand is far more offensively commercial and imperialist for me, because there are many other religious affiliations in Australia.
Ultimately though, Halloween is based around an equinoxal celebration, and in the northern hemisphere it’s the autumnal harvest time.
The Americans celebrate Halloween both because of their strong Irish connections and its confluence with Central American Day of the Dead festivals - so commercialised it might be like everything else in western culture, but a genuine festival it is. If you actually live in the USA, not only does Halloween see all the commercial.candy stuff, but also local community festivals, and many choose that time to remember their lost loved ones, believing as the Irish did that the veil between the dead and the living worlds is at it’s thinnest.
As for cultural imperialism, when we start doing Thanksgiving I’ll be worried, although we’ve already adopted Turkey as our Christmas bird because of it, when traditionally in England the bird was pheasant or goose - and ham of course.
Really, it’s what you make of it. The appeal of Halloween as others have said is the chance for some community building and watching kids have a great deal of fun.
But overall I’d like to see us as a culture develop our own festivals and celebrations, rather than import. The Solstices and Equinoxes make the logical points, as they are seasonal changes that bind us all together.
When I was growing up, Australian-ifying Christmas was very ‘in’, and it was a vast improvement on pretending that snow was integral - we used gum trees for the tree, animal representations involved Australian ones, and seafood bbqs / feasts replaced a large sweating turkey; in short it became much more like the festival the Christians plumped on for Jesus’ birthday, a solstice celebration. If we simply took on that time of year as the celebration of the summer solstice, it would rock. As does ‘Christmas in July’ because then having a massive roasted meal at roughly the time of the Winter solstice makes heaps of sense.
Cracker night was terrific fun and people who minded having their letter boxes blown up should have gotten a sense of humour. Or a stronger letter box. Sure the odd cat got its ears blown off but they’re feral pests anyway and have no business being in Australia in the first place.
I know nothing of this Guy Fawkes nonsense … in Sydney cracker night was on Commonwealth Day in May. Weeks beforehand you’d start to hear the odd bunger going off and the pace would intensify steadily leading up to the big event, when old diggers would smile nostalgically as they were taken back to the Battle of the Somme.
On the day itself we’d all have a school assembly and hear about the glories of the British Commonwealth and then get half a day off to go and blow things up. Dad would come home with a box of fireworks to let off in the backyard, the catherine wheel would never spin properly and one of the sky rockets would fail to ignite. Oh and the dog would burn its mouth chasing tom thumbs.
About 9 pm my suburb would sound like Baghdad on a busy night with rockets going up at a great rate and the occasional bonfire. By 11 there would be a heavy pall of smoke over the whole place with just an infrequent crackle of bungers to disturb the peace.
It all began to go downhill when they abolished Commonwealth Day and decreed that from now on, cracker night would be on Queen’s Birthday. Then they banned bungers, then they stopped shops selling other fireworks for more than a week or something before the event, and finally they banned everything. All because a few of the dumb kids managed to injure themselves. Who cares? It’s just natural selection at work … the same kids probably started running with scissors instead.
Every time I see a festival in Asia with those humungous strings of giant crackers I feel insanely jealous.
Walking round with an adult begging for stuff to make you obese … we’ve rooted childhood completely.
Guy Fawkes night was huge in NZ where I grew up. There was a rhyme we all sung while dancing around the bonfires and letting off “double happies” and “thunder bungers”:
Halloween seemed to creep up on us in Australia about a decade ago. My kids have grown up with it and it’s hard to get sniffy when they seem to get enjoyment out of it.
But it does seem that for a lot of kids, there’s very little meaning to it other than sticking a sheet over their heads and extorting chocolates out of strangers. I certainly don’t feel comfortable about it.
Yes, Guy Fawkes was English cultural imperialism, but at least the tradition had some depth to it. And it was a lot more fun blowing things up and dancing around bonfires, as the adults got pissed in the backyard, than traipsing around the neighbourhood knocking on strangers’ doors for a few cheap lollies.
The whole thing feels fake and forced to me.
Walking round with an adult begging for stuff to make you obese … we’ve rooted childhood completely.
Too true. Giving junk food to kids who come knocking on the door is plain irresponsible as well as lacking in imagination. Anyhow, why give the perpetually consuming sods anything? Why don’t they give us something, like a seedling they’ve grown. Or perform a tap dance. Or recite a poem they’ve composed?
I was never mad about cracker night as a kid. All the neighbourhood dogs would bolt, or cringe and howl and cower under the bed for the next 24 hours. Sparklers were pretty and skyrockets, but bungers and tom thumbs were just designed to startle and it was always the boys throwing them, at the girls, and passing adults. Such fun.
I lived virtually next door to a Chinese temple in Glebe for many years and ever since have dreaded being anywhere in the vicinity of Chinese New Year celebrations. Loud, explosive noises at night that go on for hours are not enjoyable; they are a form of torture. Silence is golden and so rare these days.
I dread New Years Eve in the city now for the same reason which is why we usually make sure we have gone bush by then. Do people have any idea or not care how much the continuous fire works explosions over large areas across the burbs and the city terrorise and traumatise people who like silence or sounds of their own choice as well as cats, dogs, birds and all the other wild animals with whom we share this planet?
I think there is a decent parallel between Halloween and el Dia de los Muertos in Mexico. Aren’t they both ancient traditions coopted by newcomers? I don’t know much about Halloween, but I think Day of the Dead was originally when the locals in the Americas got their dead rellies out, paraded them about, partied with them – couldn’t have them miss out on a good fiesta – and then put them back when they’d had enough chicha.
The Spaniards though this a touch odd, so they conveniently aligned it with some Catholic saint (I guess there’s always a spare saint about) and suggested, perhaps forcefully, that the locals use paper mache, or something.
I’m new here, so I won’t comment much on American imperialism, save to suggest maybe we could encourage some more Antipodean spooks.
I’ve still got a John Hewson rubbery mask I could lend out for next year.
Nobody seems prepared to do a trick, which I thought was supposed to be part of the whole extortion scheme.
The Australian version of Halloween is still half baked, but as it’s so new here, I’m sure it will become more elaborate within the next few years. Maybe then the tricks will enter the picture … or it will just stay as a case of kids dressing in black and going from door to door getting cheap sweets (undoubtedly to be known as ‘candy’ any minute now.)
* - if you’re doing the bonfires, then you’ve got at least part of the Irish thing going on… and as long as you’ve got pumpkins, why waste ‘em?
jpz, bonfires are a thing of the past and it’s not autumn here so pumpkins aren’t particualrly in season and they aren’t a feature of Australian Halloween - no one does pumpkin carving, for example.
one particular street has the become the main focus of halloween in the local area - about 1000 kids and parents (many who dress up ) going up and back for a couple of hours - with about 30/40 houses participating - and the amount of teens, going around the neighbourhood in costume, seems to be more each year.
Wow, that reminds me of the Christmas lights phenomenon, where certain streets make a feature of lights and other people flock to look at them. I think our street is a Halloween magnet too, as I’ve seen children here who I know live completely elsewhere, but we aren’t anywhere near that scale.
In the past I’ve tried offering less commercial sweets - last year we offered organic licorice, which was turned down by most children!
I also have fond memories of cracker night - the important thing was that it took place in winter. It was dark. Kids here go round the balmy streets in daylight - which to me defeats the whole purpose of a ’scary’ festival.
I feel let down. I’m too young to remember Cracker Night, but I’m too old to take part in Halloween.
Personally, I think the idea of Halloween is just fine– I always wanted to celebrate it when I was a kid. And yes, Samhain was/is an Autumnal harvest festival for the Northern Hemisphere, but that just means that we should be celebrating Bel Tane instead.
About 10 years ago I had a couple of kids knock on my door for Halloween, but it hasn’t happened since. I didn’t have any lollies so I gave them 20c each.
Prefer Bonfire Night.Living in Clempton Park (near JWH’s Earlwood) in a dead end street, the whole street used to get together and build a bonfire in the park at the bottom of the street, and parents would let off crackers, carefully supervised. Kids would go bananas with sparklers. It was all poetry in the dark.
Aha, so all of a sudden, the multiculturalism, it not so popular for a moment, eh? Okay: ready, set… extrapolate!
Kidding aside, personally I sympathize with the folks here who are annoyed by the sudden appearance or imposition of somebody else’s weird incomprehensible holiday. Even if it’s a fun one. But even if it turns out you can’t get rid of it (and why not try to get rid of it?), there’s probably a million ways to Australianize it until no yank would ever understand what you were up to. I hope there are scads of weird Australian traditions that don’t make any sense outside of Australia, except maybe among small groups of expats. I look forward to being bewildered by other people’s particularity.
Judging from what I’ve read here, it sounds like you’ve only adopted the top layer of Halloween, and are missing out on some of the subtler intricacies, which isn’t suprising, given the way tropes travel, though it may mean what you’re seeing is probably a lot less fun than the original. (But all the easier to amputate, too!) If it’s any consolation, I think Halloween has been substantially wrecked here, by commercialization and shallowness. Why, when I was a lad (CUE DROOPY FLASHBACK MUSIC AND WAVY FX) it was thought disgraceful to wear a store-bought costume. I remember one kid who went trick-or-treating with a couple of dozen car-radio antennas ingeniously stuck into his body somehow; when we asked what he was supposed to be, he said, “Acupuncture!” Kids these days, grumble grumble whine bitch complain.
Festivus for the rest of us.
“Bob Maumill is a bit of a strange one - considering his friendships with Burke, Grill, Kevin Reynolds and Norm Malborough.”
“I’ve always said that 6PR stands for 6 Perth Rednecks”.Too true
Rumor has it Bob is now a J.P. he has probably purged his mind of any left wing thoughts.
I love the way they have made some of the shows so called”politician free” of course this is to stop the Labor polly’s using the radio station to further their lead in the polls.I still listen to some of them though, the supposed serious commentary is funnier than the Chaser.
Cracker Night superseded Empire Day which dates from around 1905. It was a day that celebrated Queen Victoria’s birthday throughout the British Empire. The celebrations, including parades, bonfires and firecrackers were aimed at school children, inculcating a love of the Union Jack, etc.
Catholic schools reportedly generally did not take part in Empire Day, because of Irish hostility to the British government’s refusal to grant home rule. Instead Catholics celebrated ‘Australia Day’ on 24 May.
After World War 11, Empire Day evolved into Commonwealth Day, and then into Cracker Night by the 1960s, before it died out altogether, after been banned by the states from the early to late 1980s on safety grounds.
Guy Fawkes Night was celebrated in some states prior to the early 1900s but the powers-that-be thought that the widespread community love of towering bonfires and loud noises should be diverted into more worthy, respectable, patriotic channels.
Some people recall Anzac Parade, Sydney in the 1970s being lined with up multiple (15-20) towering bonfires on Cracker Night, and also the beach-front at Brighton-le-Sands - two places where Sydney families, including many Kooris, would bring their kids on Cracker Night.
I guess things haven’t changed all that much now that Halloween appears to be all the rage with today’s kids. We’ve just swapped one empire’s ritual celebration for another empire’s (ripped-off and badly degenerated) ritual celebration.
Nation of unreconstructed forelock tuggers, eh wot?
“After World War 11,…”
Leapin’ lizards, have we been sitting here yacking *that* long?
“would bring their kids on Cracker Night.”
Cracker Night, eh. Can’t help wondering how that would go down in Alabama.
I remember going “trick or treating” in Sydney as a kid in the early ’80s, so it’s not been all that recently adopted. This year I escorted my 5-year-old and her friend from across the street up and down our block. We saw quite a few unescorted older kids and a couple of escorted young’uns and actually met some of the neighbours, including a future school-mate.
As much as I dislike much of the adoption of American traditions and isms (e.g. the American date format, which seems to have been almost universally adopted), I can’t help but think that there might be a bit of community spirit to be regained from the “trick or treat” part of Halloween.
Jeepers, as a kid I would have given my right arm to go trick-or-treating, but it was just ‘one of those things people on TV do’ like putting jelly on a sandwich, eating a pickle and counting in Spanish. Just not by real people.
But my kidses are right into it and last year we made arrangements with the neighbours for them to go trick or treating. And Coles had a carving pumpkin for sale, so I got to make a Jack-o-lantern. Much fun was had (too much fun - I forgot I was appearing on Temptation that night). Never seen any trick-or-treating other than that. Ironically the only person who needed trick or treating explained to him was the Irish guy a couple of doors down.
As for the Mexican ‘day of the dead’ you know about the Hallows Eve/All Saints’ Day/All Souls’ Day observances in the Western Church? That’s the obvious connection between them.
d
Now that bloody arseabout date thing.. drives me NUTZ!
You really can’t help yourself, can you, jpz. I talk about the history of cracker nights in Australia & Kooris participation in them and this is your response. It’s beyond condescending and tactless. It’s indicative of your entire racial mindset. Yes, yes, Aborigines are just like wetbacks who breed like pigs but whom you don’t extend the right to abortion and their just like African-Americans who are drug fiends and hopeless addicts, one and all.
OTOH, a great untold story, well partly told but you gotta know where to look, is the Indigenous Australian communities’ adoption and integration of so many of the cultural practices, beliefs, rituals and ideologies of non-indigenous society.
It’s a fascinating and very moving story.
Not sure about cracker night, jinmaro. Where I came from it was celebrated on 5th November and for us Irish Catholics it was strictly off-limits because we saw it for what it was. Protestant triumphalism.
Happily those days are long past.
But on the rest of your comment I would be really interested if you were to write something on the adoption and integration by indigenous Australian communities of many of the cultural practices, beliefs, rituals and ideologies of non-indigenous society. If Mark agreed, and you had the time and were so inclined, I think it would be worth a thread by itself.
For pete’s sake, jinmaro, please relax a bit. All I did was make a silly pun. For what it’s worth, (and it’s sort of interesting if true), I’m pretty sure that your use of “cracker” as in Cracker Night and the use of “cracker” as in “po’ Suthrun white trash” share the same etymological root.
Sorry if you thought I was poking fun at you, but I was really just playing around with the word. It was like a piece of candy you left lying on the floor, and I just couldn’t help picking it up.
“You really can’t help yourself, can you, jpz.”
That part you’ve pretty much got right, just not in the sense you were angling for. Seriously, though, I’m sorry if it caused you annoyance, which was not the purpose. And btw, I found your sketch of the background of Cracker Night informative and cool to read.
j-p-z:
Had to ask the resident follower of American history what a Cracker was. [despite my contact with the rich vocabulary of American soldiers way way back in ancient history, can’t recall ever hearing the term]. Explanation given so I read on …. then came to your explanation; almost word for word; no kidding. L-O-L.
Given the chasm between Catholic and Protestant in the Australia of yesteryear [almost as wide and deep as between black and white in the US], Catholic, mainly “Irish” Catholic, reluctance to get enthusiastic over Empire Day is understandable as was their delight in celebrating the anniversary of an almost successful plot to blow up the king of England and his
henchmenParliament. It might have been different where Greg M grew up so I don’t doubt his memory of Protestant triumphalism.Jinmaro:
Guy Fawkes Night was one of those occasions when kids, Aborigine or white, joined in all the fun. And why not? Kids are kids. That must have infuriated all those pompous do-badders who took it upon themselves to enforce the official line on Race.
“In the back of my mind, I still think it’s cultural imperialism”
You think Australia adopting in desultory fashion, a 2000 year old plus annual festival (far older than the classic formal Christmas imported by Prince Albert into the Anglo world around 150 years ago) is cultural imperialism? Well then, wait till you discover what’s been happening to popular music over the past 90 years.
Can anyone come up with a convincing explanation of why our wealthy Western civilisiation shouldn’t reward its boring day to day grind with at least one annual Dionysusian carnival of rubber horror, sugar and sex, masked maraudering, gunpowder in action and general topsy-turvey.
It’s a piss-poor, dull civilisation that can’t find room for some Saturnalian sartori now and again.
‘
jinmaro — ah, now I understand why you got so angry before (or at least I think I do, correct me if I’m wrong). It’s actually kind of an interesting case of linguistic misconnections and blog mechanics.
The spot where I quoted a piece of your sentence, was where you discussed Aboriginal families joining in and participating on Cracker Night, which was a significant part of your text; but I was only quoting the last few words, taken more or less arbitrarily, in order to reference Cracker Night itself, for the purposes of making a pun (over here “cracker” means an insult directed at white people, esp. Southerners; so having a holiday called Cracker Night sounds as odd to me as if there was a holiday in Australia called Wog Night, though I do know how you use “cracker”.) I situated the joke in Alabama because, well, it’s full of people who would bristle at the word “cracker,” but you probably inferred it as a reference to that state’s history of racial segregation.
It’s sort of a little Perfect Storm of signifiers run amok, if you think about it. (I wonder how many other times things like this happen in blog-language). Anyway, I didn’t mean the remark in any denigrating fashion at all, and I’m sorry to have annoyed you.
I didn’t know that American slang meaning of cracker, jpz. The Wiki article on it is fascinating.I thought you meant something else.
A reference to crack cocaine perhaps?
A study in going off half coked.
Someone relied on Wiki to base a response to a post ?
Thats like asking a Family First member to give an opinion on the ALP, somhow you just know there’s gunna be bias in there !
Just on Cracker night. In the southern suburbs of Sydney I remember it fondly, I cant say it was any great melting pot, but rather just every kid in the area, dragging timber from under the house to the communal bonfire. We’d take a good week or two to build ours every kid working to build that giant cone of flame, bigger and better than the one in the next street.
Then on the night, your parents would bring your smaller siblings and the fire would be lit, the crackers would go off and when the embers died down and the crackers were exhausted everyone would walk home.
Such was life in the 1970’s Malabar, a suburb of commision houses and prison officers. Fibro by the sea. nothing like what its become.
j-p-z,
We could have kids going round wearing Ned Kelly armour, including the helmet. Or John Howard masks with devil horns. They could also dress up as Bunyips and Yowies. This would give Halloween an Australian flavour.
One more story on Empire Night at Clempton Park and the bonfire in the parkat the bottom of the street.
When I was about 9, the kid next door, who was five, went down to the park and set the bonfire alight two days early. Much laughter and embarrassment for his parents. So everybody got together and built a new bonfire.
Can anyone come up with a convincing explanation of why our wealthy Western civilisiation shouldn’t reward its boring day to day grind with at least one annual Dionysian carnival of rubber horror, sugar and sex, masked maraudering, gunpowder in action and general topsy-turvey.
Nabakov, I don’t think you must have seen the actual Australian Halloweeners over the past two days (they were out again last night in my area). There’s nothing Dionysian about it. It’s about a generation of children who’ve been watching Hollywood DVDs over and over again since they were babies and see very little distinction between themselves and the children in the films. They get dressed up in witch or princess costumes (and something black if they’re boys) and go from house to house in broad daylight, being rewarded with plastic-wrapped mini Mars bars.
You ought to break free of your bourgeois puritan city and come up to Sydney more often, N. Around Mardi Gras time. There’s nothing more hopeful for the future of cultural imperialism than a religious festival of fasting and self-discipline turned into GLBTI protest, coopted semi-successfully by marketers, watched in fascination by uncomfortable straight suburbanites, who in turn are fetishised by the marching Kaths and Kims.
Moomba? I despair of your sad Southern semi-saturnalia.
You know, I could see a similar kind of cultural appropriation working for Halloween:
An yet that’s probably the most Australian of innovations on Halloween: the CBF Factor.
the CBF Factor
Um, what’s that?
I lived in the US as a child, and have great memories of it — enough to overcome the cultural imperialism outrage. But it has to be done properly. It’s no good having kids turn up and harass people who aren’t prepared for it. Even if they want to cooperate, they may not have any suitable treats, and will feel terrible about disappointing the children. Parents should probably decide which household will be targeted and get permission first. Also, the message needs to get out that that this is for 3-7 year olds, not eleven year olds.