On a Saturday evening in early October this year I was biking to a friend's 40th birthday party in Umeå when I nearly ran over a herd of Swedish youth wearing what were clearly meant to be Halloween costumes.
It was so far away from Halloween – October 31st, with, where I'm from, party elements being held on the nearest possible Friday or Saturday – that, if this had happened during my first autumn in Sweden, I would have asked my (Swedish) husband if these young people were dressed up for some uniquely Swedish student celebration.
But, this being my third autumn in Sweden, I understood that the only thing uniquely Swedish (or Scandinavian, or perhaps even European more broadly) about these blonde young people in sparkly devil costumes was their well-meaning fumbling of Halloween traditions.
I loved Halloween growing up. From the time we could walk (and, for my youngest brothers, even earlier), my three brothers and I would scarf down an early dinner, get our costumes on, and head out into the gathering dusk clutching old pillowcases that would, after hours of solid trick-or-treating work, end up bulging with candy.
It's only since moving to Sweden that I feel the need to add that this would be on October 31st and October 31st only. The understanding of Halloween traditions here is so muddled (and overlapping with much more well-established traditions; more on that later) that one of my first autumns in Sweden I was unnerved by the ringing of our third-floor apartment doorbell at 9pm on November 2nd – only to look through the peephole and see a collection of tweens dressed as witches and zombies.
Some years here in Sweden I've had a group of kids (always older ones, on the cusp of adolescence) ring on October 31st as well as some night in early November, and some years none ring at all. On the nights when trick-or-treaters came, it was only ever one lone group per night.
These bizarre one-offs are in stark contrast to the Halloweens I grew up with in Toronto. There, as in most North American neighbourhoods where children live, there is no mistaking which night is Halloween: not only is every human youngster from aged 2 to 14 out on the streets, giggling and racing around, but the landscape itself is transformed.
Almost every house is lit up – many properties are decorated elaborately, with fake cobwebs covering bushes, stuffed spiders hanging from trees, rows of jack-o-lanterns lining pathways, and plastic skeletons lounging in deck chairs, but a single jack-o-lantern sitting outside the front door, or even just a porch light remaining on, is the universally-understood sign that a house is ready for the candy-knock.
The special Halloween atmosphere really kicked in once the sun set and the jack-o-lanterns began glowing more brightly, their eerie orange flickers lighting the way up the dark pathways to unknown doors. In some ways it was my first experience of the more lively variety of mys – the classic Swedish concept of "cosy".
Sweden, home of mysigt, has plenty of magical cosy autumn traditions, all of them involving flickering lights in the midst of windy damp darkness, but none of them are Halloween.
And that is, of course, just fine; cultures and places are different, even in this globalised commercial mono-cultural age. As an adult, I find the Swedish tradition of Lucia, along with the month of advent lights and stars in nearly every window, absolutely as magical and cosy as Halloween – if less nostalgic for me personally.
So when the end of October comes and some people here in Sweden say that they're 'doing' Halloween, I frankly just wish that they... wouldn't. Not because it offends me – my feeling is that it's not cultural appropriation when the culture in question is from the dominant global power and is being constantly shoved down your throat – but because, when you miss something, a pale dribble of imitation of that thing, done in whatever earnestness, can make you miss it a lot more than if there were simply no reminders at all.
Here in Sweden, knowledge of Halloween has come primarily from Hollywood and other forms of mass-transmitted North American culture, and attempts at adopting it are recent, patchy, and overall more about student dress-up parties throughout autumn than the kiddo trick-or-treating which is, 'back home,' at the centre of the event.
There is a Swedish phrase now for "trick-or-treat!" – bus eller godis, which is very cute – but although some kids do valiantly dress up and try to go out candy-collecting, the problem is that in order to make trick-or-treating work, you really need a critical mass of participating households. That's very far from the case here in Sweden – and for good reason.
Instead of North-American-style Halloween, many Swedes are observing All Hallows' Eve/All Saints' Day – which falls on the first Saturday between October 31st and November 6th, and is historically related to Halloween. But it's a quiet, sombre holiday where one puts a candle outside one's home or at the grave of a deceased friend or family member.
This would make it rather gauche to cover your lawn in fake skeletons or enormous wavering mummy inflatables, so no one really does; at most, they put out a jack-o-lantern, but even these are few and far between. This makes it hard to trick-or-treat with any success, which then compounds the problem – as does the fact that no one seems quite agreed on what night to head out door-knocking, or which doors one should knock on.
This date confusion arises partly, I assume, from a desire to avoid overlap with the tonally very different All Saints' holiday, and partly out of the aforementioned patchy understanding of the traditions being imitated. It also probably stems from another clash with longer-established traditions: Swedish schools have a week-long break in the autumn as well as the spring (höstlov) and it usually falls on the same week as Halloween. It's common for families (at least those with some money), to travel during höstlov – leaving even more houses dark and void of candy.
All of these things together mean that, as far as I'm concerned, Halloween just doesn't happen here, and I frankly wish that Swedish society would collectively decide (I hear they're pretty good at that!) to put the half-hearted, muddled, sporadic attempts out of their misery, and keep the focus on the All Saints' Day, which has been observed in Sweden for centuries. That holiday is beautifully melancholic, sombre, and staid – and overall seems much more suited to the Swedish mood in this time of gathering darkness than the garish, exuberant, spooky carnival that is North American Halloween.
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