Halloween: a hit in Switzerland?

Halloween has made its appearance over the last decade in Switzerland swissinfo.ch

On Wednesday evening, a number of costumed Swiss children will go door-to-door, chanting the equivalent of "Trick or treat!" and asking for candy, as children in America do.

Ten years ago, Halloween, which falls on October 31, was almost unknown in Switzerland. Now farmers sell thousands of pumpkins, many Swiss dance clubs stage Halloween parties, and stores sell buckets of orange and black candies shaped like witches or ghouls.

This year, Switzerland’s giant retailer, Migros, is featuring some 60 Halloween-related items, and serving Halloween-influenced menus at its many restaurants.

Martin Müller, webmaster for www.halloween.ch, runs Ballon-Müller AG, a party-goods firm in Herznach, canton Aargau, which sells about 100 Halloween items, from costumes to party decorations.

“My most popular article is the scream mask, but everything sells. Of course, I can’t make a living from Halloween, but I really enjoy it,” Müller told swissinfo. “When I first started selling stuff in 1999, my products were exotic, but by 2000, they were all over the place.”

Two years ago, the Loeb department stores started featuring Halloween-related items. “What’s been most successful are the products with a pumpkin motif,” says spokesman, Simon Niederhauser.

Early start

Some 15,000 people kicked off Switzerland’s Halloween celebrations last weekend in Zurich, dancing all night at what they called the largest Halloween party in the world.

The Zurich bash featured 50 tons of pumpkins, and Hip Hop and other music.

On the same day, children in Lausanne ate pumpkin soup, paraded in costume, and enjoyed an outdoor Halloween festival at the Place de l’Europe.

Belgian-born Christine Burkhard, a teacher and mother of four, who is married to a Swiss, learned about Halloween when the family spent some years living in Washington, DC.

When the family returned to Switzerland, “On that first Halloween, I had a sleep-over party with my children’s friends. We went to the woods in our costumes, and I read them scary stories by candlelight.”

“This year my husband and I are giving a party for our friends; I’ll decorate the house with spider webs, serve witches’ soup, play scary music, and show a vampire movie in the basement.”

Soapy windows

In the United States, on Halloween, children go from house to house, collecting treats. Older children may soap windows, festoon trees with toilet paper, or let their hair down at parties.

In Switzerland, Oliver Wolffers, 10, plans to visit 15 or 20 apartments with his friends, Tim and Samir.

“I’d never heard of Halloween until two years ago,” says Oliver. “Then suddenly it was everywhere. I read about it in a Mickey Mouse comic and decided the candy part sounded fun, but that year my parents said I was too young to go out at night.”

Pumpkins

According to the Swiss farming newspaper, “Der Schweizer Bauer” (The Swiss farmer), in 1991, 230 tonnes of pumpkins were sold in Switzerland. By 2000, it was around 10,000 tonnes.

The undisputed royal family of the pumpkin business is the Juckers, whose main firm, Farmart AG, is based in Seegräben, in canton Zurich. It covers about 50 per cent of the Swiss market and employs a network of over 100 pumpkin-growing farmers throughout Switzerland.

In 1997 the Juckers decided to experiment with new products, hoping to find a market niche.

“We planted 50 tonnes of pumpkins, and they succeeded about 50 times better than anything else,” says Martin Jucker, Farmart’s sales manager. “So we specialised, and now we’ve gone into several new lines of business, doing parties, decorations and special events in Germany, Switzerland and Austria.”

The original Halloween stems from a Celtic holiday called Samhain; carved turnips were the original jack o’ lanterns. After millions of Irish immigrants brought their holiday to the US in the 19th century, the pumpkin become its main symbol.

“Vulgar” symbols?

For some retailers, like the Globus department store chain, Halloween is already on its way out.

“Our motto is ‘The Special in Everyday Life’,” explains Marcus Fuhrer, marketing coordinator for the stores’ home and household departments, “and these days Halloween decorations can be bought at every gas station and drugstore. There is nothing ‘special’ about them anymore; the whole thing has become vulgar.

“Three years ago we began to carry tasteful Halloween decorations for the home, but this year we have decided that we’ll sell out our remaining stock and discontinue offering anything in this area, except for a few items in the toy department.”

MB Productions, on the other hand, which has for the past two years organised Zürich’s enormous Halloween party, has no intention of abandoning Halloween.

“We’re already thinking about next year,” promises the firm’s owner, Michel Bronner.

swissinfo