PARIS --
In one of the stranger manifestations of
globalization, Halloween fever has abruptly gripped
the French, sending pumpkin prices soaring and sorely
testing the Gallic ability to pronounce "trick
or treat."
Every
last rampart against things American seems to have
fallen as more than 8,000 pumpkins have been spread
across the Trocadero esplanade in Paris, stores have
filled with ghoulish masks and inflatable pumpkin
costumes, at least one champagne has adopted a
special pumpkin label, bakeries have begun selling
"Halloween cakes", and villages have
adopted Halloween festivals.
Just
a year ago, Halloween -- pronounced
"AH-lo-een" by the French -- was virtually
unknown here. The only things selling briskly on the
eve of All Saints' Day were the chrysanthemums
traditionally taken to cemeteries to be placed on
graves.
But
the progressive Americanization of French culture,
the realization that Halloween is a useful marketing
ploy in the hollow period before the Christmas
season, and the seeming thirst of an economically
stagnant society for a moment of festivity seem to
have combined to create a sudden Halloween obsession.
"I
must tell you that all this is absolutely
bizarre," said Marie-France Gueusquin, an
ethnologist at the Museum of Arts and Popular
Traditions in Paris. "I suddenly started seeing
pumpkins everywhere in my local Monoprix supermarket
and I had no idea what was going on. This is
emphatically not a traditional French festival, and
my only explanation is that we have belatedly
discovered the power of marketing."
Certainly,
the national telephone company, France Telecom, which
sold shares to the public this month for the first
time, has decided the pumpkin plays well with the
French. Its mobile telephone, the Ola, is being
advertised with orange billboards announcing the
pleasures of "Olaween." The five truckloads
of pumpkins now at Trocadero were placed there by the
company to back this campaign.
"Halloween
is in the air," said Frederic Queret, a
spokesman for France Telecom. "It's festive,
convivial, and it's a great way to sell a product.
Commercially, this period is usually very calm, and
Halloween fills the gap before Christmas."
As
the fever has risen, pumpkin prices surged 12.5
percent this week, to reach 2.50 francs a kilo (about
25 cents a pound) at the Paris wholesale market at
Rungis. Most flower stores in Paris now have pumpkins
on display, and Hallmark has started to sell
Halloween cards in France for the first time.
"It
was weird," said Anne-Marie Carluis, a spokesman
for Hallmark in France. "We suddenly began to
get requests from stores for these cards. We've
shipped thousands. A new festival has been born in
France."
So,
has some hobgoblin or fairy slipped into France and
spirited away the country's traditional resistance to
cultural invasion by the "Anglo-Saxons,"
leaving it strangely vulnerable to every last excess
of "le marketing" in its most aggressive
American form?
Not
quite. French newspapers have pointedly noted that
the origins of Halloween, or All Hallows' Eve, are
European rather than American. It was in ancient
Britain and Ireland that a pagan festival was
observed on Oct. 31, the eve of the New Year in both
Celtic and Anglo-Saxon times, and the souls of the
dead were said to revisit their homes.
These
pagan practices influenced the Christian festival of
All Hallows' Eve, and Halloween became associated
with pranks, demons, and the supernatural. But it was
of course in the United States -- where immigrants,
particularly the Irish, introduced the customs --
that Halloween flourished. The pumpkin was introduced
as a symbol, and the festival was firmly linked to
children through trick-or-treating.
"Before
it became American, this was a European festival, so
I don't see why we should not celebrate it in
France," Claude Thieulin said as he gazed at a
selection of Halloween offerings -- trick-or-treat
balloons, jelly beans, masks, and inflatable pumpkins
-- at the Galeries Lafayette department store in
Paris. "It's an extra excuse to have some fun,
and, believe me, we need that."
Some
villages holding Halloween festivals, like Muy in
southern France, have also contended that Halloween
and its accompanying pumpkins are not particularly
American in that the pumpkin (la citrouille), which
is also grown here, has long played an important part
in the local cuisine.
Nevertheless,
it seems clear that French Halloween is merely
another sign of the growing power of American culture
in France, where fast-food restaurants, American
movies, reversed baseball caps, and American
basketball stars play an ever larger part in national
life. Attempts to defend French language and culture
have proved increasingly vulnerable to this
onslaught.
"For
us, Halloween is a real discovery, a wonderful
marketing exploit," said Laurence Tankere, a
spokeswoman for Galeries Lafayette. "I think it
is so successful because people are longing for an
excuse to have a good time. It is interesting that we
have sold as many articles for adults as for
children." She said that the Paris store's sales
of Halloween merchandise was worth about $2,000 a
day.
Anna
Ocampo, 13, and Pauline Coyac, 14, were shopping for
Halloween goods on Thursday at Galeries Lafayette.
They discovered Halloween for the first time this
year, and have already adorned their homes with
pumpkins and masks.
"It's
a festival of the dead, I think," Anna said,
"but it's a lot of fun."
Asked
if they knew about trick-or-treating, they looked
blank. "Treek au treeting?" Pauline said.
But
Tankere, the spokeswoman, was already familiar with
this American refinement of Halloween. "I am
sure it will come to France," she said. "It
is like door-to-door selling, I think, and it's
wonderful!"