As Halloween approaches, I find myself deep in the world of devilish decor and frightening food. For me growing up, Halloween was an exciting celebration, which I greatly anticipated.  However, it was usually just a one-day event.

When I first came to live in Finland in 2002, traces of Halloween could be spotted here and there. I was able to carry on with my tradition as dressing in a costume at my workplace, an English kindergarten.  For the most part, though, Halloween was not really celebrated, at least not in the American sense.  (Finns have a tradition of putting candles on the graves of loved ones as part of All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day.)  Therefore, as has been the case with other minor holidays I was used to celebrating, I turned it into a major holiday in my household.

Halloween has become more and more popular in Finland since I first came here.  I have delved into the diy sector of the holiday, finding the tacky, cheaply made merchandise in the stores here unauthentic and distasteful.  I get the sense that stores are forcing the issue onto a public that does not feel it, perhaps not completely unlike the way US Americans have in recent years adopted cinco de mayo.

So, as I labor away at the orange satin trim on my almost finished bat mat, I recognize that I do so because I am trying to culturally identify myself.  I celebrate Halloween, and this is how I celebrate it.

How do you culturally identify yourself?  What things do you do, maybe even over-do, to distinguish yourself?  How do you relate to the culture around you: do you invite it into your personal space or actively keep it at bay?  Are you an importer of culture from another geographic location?  Whether we are surrounded by a culture that is our native one or have been transplanted into a culture we find different from our own, we all are constantly giving to and taking from culture, which shapes both us and the world in which we live.