What’s a cultural tradition from another country
that you wish existed in yours?
The tradition I wish we had more strongly in Australia is not really Halloween. It is what sits behind it. In France, All Saints’ Day, or Toussaint, is still marked as a public holiday. Families visit cemeteries. They clean graves, place flowers, light candles, and remember their dead. The country slows down, at least for a day, and makes room for memory. I find that deeply appealing.
I was a parish minister for twenty years before moving into academia. During those years I always kept an eye on All Saints’ and All Souls’. We were a contemporary church, not highly liturgical, so we did not have elaborate rituals. But we still found ways to stop. A pause in the service. A prayer. A space for people to remember those who had shaped their lives: parents, grandparents, teachers, friends, mentors, quiet faithful people whose influence remained. Sometimes they would name them out loud. Sometimes they would write a prayer expressing their thanks. Sometimes they lit a candle in memory.
It was always meaningful because it told the truth. None of us is self-made. We all carry the investments of other people in our lives. Some are still with us. Some are not. But their influence remains.
Halloween, in its modern commercial form, feels like a poor substitute. Plastic skeletons, fake blood, costumes, lollies, parties, and marketing. I understand the fun of it, but it can become thin. Toussaint offers something weightier. It doesn’t make death noisy. It makes it honest. We did not need incense, formal processions, or complex liturgy. We just needed permission to stop, remember, and give thanks.
So if I could borrow a tradition from another country, I would borrow that. Not necessarily the whole French version, though there is something beautiful about the flowers and candles in cemeteries. I would borrow the instinct behind it.
Once a year, I would like us to become quiet enough to remember the people whose names we still carry. Halloween makes death playful. Toussaint makes it grateful. And gratitude, I think, is the better tradition.
The Afterword 
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