Swalloween
In which three-year-olds dress as ax-murderers, and there is nary a chocolate in sight...
Swiss Halloween! I am so late in posting this! But hopefully you will still find it fascinating, as long as I quit it with the exclams!
Halloween. It is not a thing in smaller villages in my adopted home-for-awhile-land. But in Swiss cities like Basel, especially in ex-pat neighborhoods, it’s catching on. Neighbors signal participation by placing a jack-o-lantern on their front stoop, and I would say about a quarter of the houses in our area join in. The jack-o-lanterns are seriously impressive, demonstrative of both crazy Swiss knife skills and newbie enthusiasm—there are complex witch faces with fancy eyes, and terrfiying goblins with big ears made from other pumpkins, and cats with perfectly rendered tiny WHISKERS! The German version of “Trick or treat?” is “Susses oder saures?”, which literally translates to “sweets or sours,” with the “sours” being a euphemism for tricks. No child seemed impolite enough to do tricks, although I did see one preteen holding an egg. For costumes, there is nothing sweet in sight. Even the smallest children are gruesome, bloody ghosts; fanged vampires; skeletons; Voldemort. I saw a three-year-old ax murderer last year.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, costumes in general are not made with the dedication and care my mother used to dedicate to the task.* In Switzerland, pretty much all the costumes are the expensive-yet-cheap Chinese kind, generally made of highly flammable materials. No judgement—I totally let Oliver buy a polyester witch with his allowance last year, leaning into the fact that no one in this country would judge me for making no more effort than recycling Dan’s race safety pins to “hem” it. The disturbing thing is not the lack of Swiss parents with glue guns making their children’s fantasy couture come true, it’s the fact that the Swiss love of fire extends far beyond the jack o’lantern. Parents will light a grill pit, an open grill pit, and hang out around it with their adult beverages in the tiny front yard or stoop or curb, while children whose outfits could go up in flames in T-minus-a-split-second squeeze by to dive for the candy bowl. It’s all such a galactically bad idea, and no one is phased…
…except for me, gasping with a fear pounded into me by the very same seamstress-extraordinaire mother, who would never let me have one of those pretty rayon hippie skirts from India sold on the Boardwalk during my childhood, as she was certain ash from some errant doobie would turn me crispier than a well-done cervelat. I can’t believe Swiss children even survive the Swiss contextualization of Halloween.
The other key difference on Swalloween is the candy. Here it’s all gummies, and a “dizzy banana” smartie thing that tastes like a cross between pop rocks and sawdust. Equally popular are fake-fangs with peachy pink marshmallow “gums” and chewy white teeth with little cherry bloodstains. The occasional Kit-Kat-esque “Kagu” will make the bag, and perhaps some toffees, and always a generous helping of the general fruity soft candy that is the staple of Fasnacht. But I ask you: What is the point of Halloween without chocolate? There are two Swiss supermarkets, Migros and Coop, and they are always across from or next to one another, like two Starbucks in an American strip mall. BOTH sell mini Lindt bars all year long. Plus many other varieties of cacao-bean-derived deliciousness. So why does chocolate not make it into people’s treat bowls?
I inquired of my dear Swiss neighbor, and he answered very matter-of-factly, “It’s not our holiday. This is a protest.” And then he cackled dryly, and seemed to enjoy one of those banana things.
For me, it’s not Halloween without mini-Snickers. This year, I went to sit with a German friend while our kids were out, and as I was bitching about the candy situation, her American husband came downstairs and offered me the very same. I don’t know where he got that little American beauty, but it really satisfied. Later, Laurel arrived and I took her susses-oder-sauering to a couple of houses, still yammering about the chocolate sitaution. At the last one, she deflty circumnavigated the fire pit, and then walked right up to the front door. Instead of a “Susses oder saueres?” however, she said “I don’t want those. Gimme chocolate for my mom.” I waved meekly. I hope this demand sounded at least a little bit sweet when said in Swiss German by a four-year-old dressed as a glitter fairy?
*Major props to my mom, Halloween costumer-maker extraordinaire, who made me into the best mermaid with a homemade tail with shiny puff-pant scales in third grade; Punk-Rock Barbie in fourth grade, complete with silver-star spangled her pink bolo jacket and a microphone made of a thick stick and lots of duct tape; and her piece de resistance in fifth grade, when she not only made me into Carmen Miranda all the top and bottom ruffles, but the most magnificent headpiece with her gluegun, plastic bananas and oranges, a fabric peach, and some grapes coated in purple glitter. It was so spectacular and spectacularly made, in fact, that this plastic fruitbasket is still in our costume box in the basement in El Cerrito—beloved also by my children. I did not bring it here, so as to salvage its last breaths my home country.
Coda with Poor Transition into Mostly Unrelated Topic
Last year for Swalloween, I dressed Laurel as a slightly dowdy pink snow leopard, a costume Oliver found in the robust side-of-the-road economy here. It rivals New York City’s, and this costume was full of holes and stained, and yet was lovingly folded and smelled of flowery detergent and lavender fabric softener. That’s a Swiss roadside score. It’s the costume equivalent of how they do paper recycling. These pictures depict last month’s recycling. Guess which pile belongs to the foreigners?
