French Resist Amercanized Halloween

[Oski]

French Halloween (http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20031031/od_uk_nm/oukoe_france_halloween)

Nothing wrong with choosing culture over commercialization. However, in doing so, no mention needs to be made about the U.S. (as if, but for the U.S. commercialization would not exist).

Anyway, I found this paragraph funny:

[ QUOTE ]
Striking a less religious note, fast food chain Flunch is also making a stand against Halloween products by celebrating an ancient local tradition -- the Gallic New Year -- instead.


Following in the footsteps of plucky cartoon character Asterix, diners eat dishes such as boar and cabbage in stores decorated with cardboard druids, and can find an inflatable helmet or sword in their meal.


[/ QUOTE ]

French protecting their culture from the onslaught of Americanization within a patently American concept - arguably our (the U.S.) most insidious export ever...FAST FOOD; complete with happy meals and child toys.

[Cyrus]

"French protecting their culture from the onslaught of Americanization within a patently American concept."

It's true that France has always been very protective of its national identity. But this is not the case here. What we have here is the age-old effort of the Christian Church to eradicate pre-Christian European customs and ceremonies. Such as Halloween, which marked the beginning of winter in the Celts' calendar.

The French Catholic Church has always used various pretexts to fight off Halloween and replace it with the so-called All-Saints Day, which it placed around the same date. Reluctantly and carefully, the Church allowed some of the old Celtic Halloween customs to slip through and then tried to sanitize them (eg taking the strong sexual content out). The current pretext happens to be the supposed Americanization of French culture.

This doesn't mean that only the French bigots are trying to smear Halloween. Some 43% of American respondents in an About.com poll (http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/blpoll_halloween.htm) think it's a Satanic holiday!

Plus ca change...

[HDPM]

Exactly. This just in.... French Catholics do something irrational to prop up their religion..... Never happened before. Well, except that time in 1207 when... or that other time... /images/graemlins/tongue.gif