Clueless in Paris, or, Angst in France

I tried to buy some Halloween decorations for a kid's party yesterday but there was not a spider web or ghost costume to be seen in any of the stores I visited. There was a pumpkin in the grocery store, but it was for making soup! Halloween was really popular here for a few years, to my delight, but there was a big backlash against this so-called American holiday, and now it has fizzled out. That's too bad. Kids seemed to love it. Well, I guess that's that. No more witches and goblins and bon-bons and ringing doorbells. Halloween has been chased out with a broom. But ... shhhh ... don't tell them that Halloween was supposedly celebrated by the Celts in France!

"I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself than be crowded on a velvet cushion." Henry David Thoreau