A Taste of Halloween

Halloween is something I have never really understood. It made no impact when I lived in England but was slowly gaining ground in Aussie with kids coming round, some times with a crazy face painted on or some sort of costume on, but here, it is a different ball game.

I am writing this in early October and there have been pumpkins (real and plastic) on sale for weeks, along with all sorts of paraphernalia to do with Halloween. You can buy a range of scarecrows, usually they are about 4 feet tall and are on a stick. They are dressed in country style outfits, have really nice faces but have straw sticking out of their arms and legs. You can also buy small bails of straw (??), plastic dried corn plants, orange pot plants, orange lights, ghost models and even things to cover your post box with (usually a design centered around orange pumpkins).

I have taken to going on walks, usually of at least 6-7 klms (often nearer 12) and have seen all sorts of things relating to Halloween. Gardens and houses are decorated with orange items. There are often orange pumpkins and pots plants by doors. One house even had a mini graveyard at the front, with a fake tombstones and crosses! But the best were two houses not far from my daughter’s house.

On one side of the road were two (almost life size) witches, with various skulls and bones scattered around and several almost full size tombstones. They are made of plastic but are extremely realistic. There were also numerous pumpkins of various sizes around the garden along with bright orange potted plants along with several large ghosts (at least five feet tall) swirling around the garden.

But this was trumped by the house directly across the road. On one side of the front door was Dracula (full size) and on the other, Frankenstein (as in a full sized traditional green monster, with bolts in his neck). There were lots skulls in the flowers beds and odd bones scattered around the garden, along with many pumpkins and orange lights. But the best of all was a grave. This had a full sized headstone, but coming up out of where the grave would be was a skeleton. It gave the impression that it was lying down and was getting itself up out of the grave through the dirt. Its head and shoulders were out of the ground, as were its arms from the hand up to about half way along the arm above the elbow. Its feet lower legs and knees to half way along its thigh were also out of the grave. Very eerie and more than a little disturbing.

This is a fundamentally Christian country, with all sorts of religious sects (usually Christian based and in some cases extreme), people make a big deal about Christian values and politicians (especially in the Presidential election) boast about their membership of a church and how often they prey and their Christian beliefs and ideals. Don’t forget this is the country where many proclaim Intelligent Design as a science and that God made the universe about 5000 years ago (seriously).

Yet this is a pagan festival that celebrates death, zombies, ghosts, blood and gore and all sorts of basically non Christian things. I simply don’t get it!!!!!