Here is an interesting article where respect for the dead is trumping commercialism. Give it up for those French Catholic youth groups!
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France Turning Its Back on 'Le Halloween'
Fri Oct 31, 1:43 AM ET
By LAURENCE FROST, AP Business Writer
PARIS - Five years after it took France by storm in a whirlwind marketing drive launched by a lone French entrepreneur, "Le Halloween" looks set to perform its very own disappearing act.
Parties, pumpkins and Halloween bar promotions are still on offer Friday night, but almost everyone agrees there's something missing this year.
The only people really spooked are retailers.
Arriving almost two decades after "trick-or-treat" entered popular vocabulary in neighboring Britain, Halloween swiftly became a cash cow that few French marketing directors could afford to miss.
But Richard Roizen, the businessman credited with importing the festival to France, died earlier this year. Paris trend-watchers are predicting that Halloween will be buried with him.
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Flunch marketing director Sophie Gilleron said she felt the tide turn against Halloween last year. "Besides, there are only so many things you can do with pumpkin," she said.
Elsewhere the culture clash is more serious. French Catholic youth groups plan to demonstrate for the second year running against what they see as Halloween's trivialization of death.
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Nevertheless, the CREDOC � a Paris-based sociological research institute � says the writing is on the wall for Halloween.
Not only does Halloween seem to undermine the solemnity of Sunday's Festival of the Dead, when some 9 million French people will visit relatives' graves, it has also "failed to create any of its own traditions," CREDOC director Robert Rochefort said.
"It was a fashion that worked very well," he said. "But it's become a victim of its own commercialism."
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The entire article can be read here:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20031031/ap_on_bi_ge/france_halloween_1 Next, Christians can start taking back Christmas and Pascha.
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