“It’s fun for the children,” they tell me. “Harmless,” they say. “It gets the kids outside – don’t be such a killjoy,” they implore.
So if my opposition to Halloween makes me the Scrooge of that festival, then so be it. You may call me a killjoy, but you won’t convince me to allow my outings with my children to be mediated by an industry devoted to helping people achieve diabetes.
I really don’t like that this cool and weird US celebration I used to watch at the movies when I was a kid, suddenly turned into a compulsory phenomenon on the other side of the Earth. Even here in Vietnam right now, all the (expatriate) parents are sending their kids out to trick or treat; and on my social media feeds I can see my Australian family and friends doing it.
The crass commercialisation, the pressure on parents to conform, the sickening amount of sugar shoved down throats: I hate it all.
More than anything, I’m tired, just exhausted, by the Americanisation of Australian culture.
Before I take up that line of thought, I want to get something straight: I really quite like America. 
The TV shows they produce are fantastic: The Wire, Battlestar Galactica, True Detective, The Americans, Deep Space 9 – thank you baby Jesus for all of these things. American science fiction writers have been a staple in my reading diet since I was a boy; I like American Football and Jazz; I love Vegas and New York; US noir cinema from the 40s and 50s is the bomb, 
and American Ninja Warrior is compulsory viewing. And as red as my politics are tinted, I think we all know that the right side won the Cold War.
I could go on: there’s a lot to like.
But the obliteration of Australian culture, I don’t like so much. The Australian dialect is losing its diverse slang and becoming more homogenised, more American. Our politicians – including the current Prime Minister – propose changes to our health and education systems that will most them less equitable, less fair, and more Americanised. While we don’t have the far-right version of the Tea 
Party in Australian politics, there are a handful of Australian politicians who have travelled to the US to learn from them, including, for example, Cory Bernardi. In turn, our politicians start to use Tea Party language like ‘lifters and leaners’. In an appalling turn for public health, our dietary habits are starting to mirror that of the US.
I find it sad that many Australians know more about the American Civil War than they would, say, the plight of Indigenous Australians after the arrival of the First Fleet.
There’s a line somewhere – a line between good US TV and bad US public policy – that has been swamped, wiped out. So much so it’s hard to see the shape of our own culture anymore. It’s more apparent to me, I suppose, because I spend these longs stints out of Australia. In 2011, for example, I returned home after three years in Laos and BOOM, suddenly everyone is celebrating Halloween.
The reverse culture shock I’ve experienced returning to Australia – a few times now – is normally 
for that reason. There’s this striking change in politics, or language, or cultural practice. For those that are inside it, on the ground, the changes are so subtle and gradual that the transformation isn’t even noticed. That’s the thing about hegemony: it’s the air you breathe, the language you speak, the (fast) food you eat; it’s so all-pervasive that it is taken for granted.
No doubt of all the objections I’ve listed: the politics, the language, the diet; Halloween seems pretty mild in comparison. There’s some truth in that, I suppose, but Halloween for me represents something bigger. For me it’s another symptom of the bleeding out of Australian culture.
So believe me when I tell you: fuck Halloween.
