Being used to bitch about people’s undiscrimating adoption of everything they are force-fed via the mass-media, I was actually getting ready to bitch about people celebrating Halloween here in Austria (as I did last year). You see, I’m a really conservative person. In Austria, you’re supposed to eat Schnitzel and maybe yodel once in a while. But there is absolutely no need for you to celebrate Halloween. After all, you don’t even know what it means, because, it’s ENGLISH. If you want to dress up, there’s a whole fucking season reserved for that from mid-January until sometime in February.
So, you may be able to imagine my distress when I started to notice that this year a lot of the stores, hair-dressers and event-managers seemed to have forgotten about their newfound darling holiday. When last year, at my local grocery store, I had to weave through shelves filled with Halloween rubbish just to reach the cashier, this year there’s nothing. No decoration, no cheap costumes, no black and orange face paint. Not even the foamy sweet stuff I actually bought last year (yeah, I know, but come on, the foam was ORANGE!!!). So, I wonder what happened. Is it the rising anti-Americanism that’s put people off Halloween? Or did the marketing hacks find out that their target demographic doesn’t actually give a shit about Halloween?
Any other Austrians here who’ve been surprised by the lack of jumping the bandwagon efforts?
Wait, let me rephrase that:
Anyone here at all? Care to comment? Use the comment form then.
You live in an indie-listening alternative reality then… or at least a conservative Grätzel.
In my ‘hood even a small Billa is a pumpkin kingdom. What make it look strange, but I wouldn’t mind have some Kürbissuppe now.
The witches give me the bi(tri, in fact)-lingual powers today.
Haha, well, yes, maybe.
Today it’s all over again, maybe they’ll now display whatever they didn’t manage to sell before the holiday, and I’ll get to see my Halloween trash.
I saw plenty of pumpkins, fake spiders & similarly useless stuff near where I live. Which annoys the heck out of me because I see absolutely no need for Halloween hereabouts — as you say, the Carnival season lasts from 11 November to mid-February, so this is totally useless.
Though I must say I was very amused when a friend of mine told me how some children had rung at her door (4th floor without a lift, no less), and all she had to give them was Müsliriegel and spelt biscuits. Har har.