Blog post about Halloween.

content/posts/2024/halloween/index.md

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+---
+title: My gripes with Halloween in Germany
+description: >
+  Celebrating Halloween in Germany is a relatively new phenomenon that
+  I believe is a manifestation of the ego-centered and hedonistic
+  state of the German society.
+date: 2024-10-31T23:00:00+0200
+draft: false
+ShowLastmod: true
+toc: false
+scrolltotop: true
+images:
+  - IMGP8436_G.JPG
+tags:
+  - opinion
+---
+
+{{< figure src="IMGP8429_G.JPG" alt="Halloween in Jamaica Plain, 2009"
+           title="Halloween in '09, Jamaica Plain, Boston, MA © Daniel Kraus">}}
+
+In the three years that I lived in Boston, Massachusetts, while persuing my
+postdoctoral fellowship at [Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center][bidmc],
+Halloween was a wonderful event. We had a little appartment literally under the
+roof of a very nice and welcoming family in Boston's Jameica Plain
+neighbourhood. The family was not just our landlords -- they quickly became
+friends. We celebrated all kinds of events together: the [Red Sox' Win of the
+World Series in 2007][sox], birthdays, Thanksgiving, ... and [Halloween][].
+
+{{< figure src="IMGP8436_G.JPG" alt="Halloween in Jamaica Plain, 2009"
+           title="Halloween in '09, Jamaica Plain, Boston, MA © Daniel Kraus">}}
+
+Halloween has a long tradition in the United States and elsewhere. Where we used
+to live in Boston, the entire street celebrated together. The street was divided
+into two halves that took turns in organizing the event each year. Everybody met
+outside. There was live music, and of course the kids did the trick-or-treat thing.
+I loved it.
+
+{{< figure src="IMGP8437_G.JPG" alt="Halloween in Jamaica Plain, 2009"
+           title="Halloween in '09, Jamaica Plain, Boston, MA © Daniel Kraus">}}
+
+Growing up in Germany in the 1980s, I was accustomed to [St. Martin's
+Day][martin] on or around 11 November in commemoration of St. Martin of Tours
+who is said to have divided his coat to share it with a poor person.
+
+We would walk through our neighbourhood, ring people's door bells, and when
+someone opened we would sing a song about St. Martin and ask for sweets. When I
+thought about this now and before it occurred to me to write a blog post about
+this, I seemed to remember that we would afterwards give most of the sweets to
+children in need (refugees, in fact) that had found shelter in a nearby
+facility. However, I now believe that we did this only on a similar occasion in
+early January when we celebrated [Epiphany with the Star singers][epiphany]
+which also involved walking around, singing, and collecting sweets. So St.
+Martin's day had a lot to do with asking for sweets for our own consumption and
+pleasure and not so much about caring and sharing, and this is important to keep
+in mind. It is also important to realize that this tradition around St. Martin
+was a regional thing and nothing nationwide (as I learned from an [article on
+Wikipedia][martin-in-germany]).
+
+In recent years, Halloween has grown very strong in Germany, and I believe that
+this is a result of deliberately injecting the tradition into our culture.
+Interestingly, this is also [Wikipedia's view][germany] (see references in the
+linked article).
+
+And that's my gripe with celebrating Halloween in Germany. There's nothing wrong
+with partying and having a good time with friends and family. But this event is
+tightly linked to buying and consuming stuff, and it is driven by "the
+industry". Again, there's nothing wrong in itself with "the industry" trying to
+sell stuff to people. But I do think that this is an example of how people can
+be made to to things. Just like [lemmings][], everybody is following suit.
+
+Halloween in Germany, as I see it, is a festival of hedonism. It has nothing to
+to with sharing, it has nothing to do with taking a break and thinking about the
+[faithful departed][halloween], but it has a lot to do with buying stuff and
+consuming stuff that you don't really need.
+
+For me, Halloween in Germany is an example for the state of our society.
+
+---
+
+Having said that, I greatly enjoyed the more or less spontaneous Halloween party
+that we had at our neighbors' place tonight ;-)
+
+[bidmc]: https://bidmc.org
+[epiphany]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_singers
+[germany]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_Halloween#Germany
+[halloween]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween
+[lemmings]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Martin%27s_Day
+[martin]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Martin%27s_Day
+[martin-in-germany]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martinisingen#Present-day_customs
+[sox]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_World_Series