"Oh, Halloween"...

“Oh”, Nicole sneered, "Halloween. That’s an American holiday." Bien sur, Nicole.

She continued, “There is a store here in Paris that has the paper cut-outs with the faces…”

“Thank you” I replied, not at all what I was really thinking, with my half-smile plastered on my face.

I fixed my bangs at the same time, in a natural swoop with my right hand. They’d gotten a little damp on the walk from the metro so they needed taming.

I’m not at all embarrassed about my passion for Halloween decorations. It’s not excessive, in fact, it’s quite subtle here in France, mainly due to lack of surfaces to put the decorations on and lack of “material”.

I’ve had a hard time finding consistent pumpkins. Every year, I eventually find something that represents my idea of Halloween, but it’s not without a cost. I traverse the city, looking at the plant market at Cite, various florists, and other shops that are “sympa”. Every year, I find the pumpkins at a new place and the previous years’ places have let me down.

I can deal with this, I’m flexible.

I have my go-to items for Halloween. The chestnuts, gathered year after year in the Luxembourg Gardens. The great Halloween quilt that my Mom gave me, a few other American decorations, small and discrete, but important to me.

Some of the Halloween items stick around through Thanksgiving, another “weird” holiday in France, but important to ME/MOI.

The little pumpkins and gourds, the chestnuts, maybe some beautiful brown leaves, they will grace my apartment until December 1, when I have to put up the Christmas stuff. Not nearly as fun, in my opinion.

So, back to Nicole and the dinner party last night. She is very nice and not at all stuffy, but I could tell that she doesn’t understand anything about the “fun” of Halloween. It isn’t necessarily scary, pagan or for the young. It’s fanciful, and, like the harvest, a celebration of life.

It will never catch on here in France as anything more than a day for young people, eastern European tourists and the manufacturers of candy.

However, there is a two-week school holiday coinciding every year with Halloween, called Toussaint which is the day after Halloween, November 1, luckily on a weekend this year so I won't be driven crazy by store closures and holiday transportation schedules.