Halloween In Buenos Aires!?

I love Halloween and refused to let it pass by un-celebrated every year that I was in BsAs. So..... I threw a party! As stated above, there aren't a lot of options for buying decorations (you can get spider webs at cotillon stores!) so I made all of mine myself, as well as Halloween-themed snacks and dessert. My Argentine hubby said that he doubted anyone would participate in the "no costume, no entry" rule....but EVERYONE did and it was a great time!!! Not having a lot of variety at the costume-rental places forced everyone to get creative and we had some awesome costumes. Complete with silly party games like "Pin the Nose on the Pumpkin" and Bobbing for Apples (and we're all in our 20s). In my opinion, it's something a lot of Argentines find interesting since they've only ever seen how we celebrate Halloween in the movies and on TV... so if you want to celebrate then I say GO FOR IT!
 
I love Halloween and refused to let it pass by un-celebrated every year that I was in BsAs. So..... I threw a party! As stated above, there aren't a lot of options for buying decorations (you can get spider webs at cotillon stores!) so I made all of mine myself, as well as Halloween-themed snacks and dessert. My Argentine hubby said that he doubted anyone would participate in the "no costume, no entry" rule....but EVERYONE did and it was a great time!!! Not having a lot of variety at the costume-rental places forced everyone to get creative and we had some awesome costumes. Complete with silly party games like "Pin the Nose on the Pumpkin" and Bobbing for Apples (and we're all in our 20s). In my opinion, it's something a lot of Argentines find interesting since they've only ever seen how we celebrate Halloween in the movies and on TV... so if you want to celebrate then I say GO FOR IT!

That sounds great! I'll have to throw my own party I guess, after reading this thread. I usually make my own costume anyway. :)
 
What really sucks is that some Argentines (some dear friends of mine even, *sigh*) love to use Halloween as an excuse to complain about cultural imperialism and homogenization. They don't LIKE Halloween, they don't WANT Halloween and they don't want our stupid American holidays getting in their way of having no fun. That's the real bummer for me.

That is because the Halloween celebration is very very very recent here, like from mid 90s, when we had a friendly and 100% pro US government that in some ways via globalization imposed the American way of life, when McDonalds boomed and was the trendy restaurant for upper middle class families, when the life in a house in the suburbs explode (we had only San Isidro but not the huge country phenomena), when we started to see all these strange stuff from the american eating industry, like M&Ms, or Coca Cola in a can, or even when the tv cable started, with 90% of channels from the US, with even the ads, like those "llame ya" so made in the US that came here to stay. It happened with lots of stuff.
So a lot of we argentines, with our big love and tradition for europe, a distinctive mark from Latin America, started to live like americans, like started to use car a lot more, highways were built, etc, but all these, with huge complaining for that, well complaining is a national sport so, but my point is celebrating Halloween is a good example of this. An author talks instead of globalization, glocalization, because as a defense for all these new culture invasion, people found a shelter in local stuff. For instance, the mate, it was something almost marginal, from the poor, the working class and some middle class. In the upper classes was not so very well seen. And in the 90s it started to be popular in the upper classes, mostly in the middle class also. Mate is popular in Argentina only since 1995 or so. Before was something related to the campo, to the gauchos, and to the poor.

I dont know why I write all these stuff. Anyway, what happens with Halloween happens also with San Valentin. For example, the celebration of the mothers day is from the 60s, the kids day, later, and like this so on. But those are not americans, those are commercial argentine.
 
Mate is popular in Argentina only since 1995 or so. Before was something related to the campo, to the gauchos, and to the poor.

Bwahahaha that's right up there with Fifa have arranged for Argentina to win the world cup.
 
What really sucks is that some Argentines (some dear friends of mine even, *sigh*) love to use Halloween as an excuse to complain about cultural imperialism and homogenization. They don't LIKE Halloween, they don't WANT Halloween and they don't want our stupid American holidays getting in their way of having no fun. That's the real bummer for me.

Halloween just aint the same nowadays, They have Pumpkins in Scotland... whats the world coming too!

This is what we had to make our lanterns out of.
cqERjIP.jpg


p.s. it's not an "american holiday".
 
I've never been one to do much on Halloween, but I do miss seeing all the trick or treaters.... and eating leftover Halloween candy. :p
 
It's my favorite day. I get to remove the costume and go natural.
 
I know Halloween is really a United States event, but my (Argentine) boyfriend told me that it's becoming more and more recognized here, mostly for the children to dress up.

I also noticed Octubre de Terror on television (yay!).

I love the spirit of Halloween. Does anybody else miss it here? Do you know of any similar events in town this month?

I think this is exactly why non-Americans such as myself get annoyed by many people from the USA. If you lot looked a bit further out of the USA you'd notice there's a whole world out there. Halloween is not an American only holiday.

Reminds me of the time I was talking to an American girl in Paris - we were speaking English of course - she said "I love your accent", when I explained that I liked hers she looked at me confused and said "I don't have an accent". I just couldn't get her to understand that American is an accent. I didn't dwell on this for too long as the goal of the conversation wasn't to discuss accents, merely to use mine for an advantage.
 
Reminds me of the time I was talking to an American girl in Paris - we were speaking English of course - she said "I love your accent", when I explained that I liked hers she looked at me confused and said "I don't have an accent". I just couldn't get her to understand that American is an accent. I didn't dwell on this for too long as the goal of the conversation wasn't to discuss accents, merely to use mine for an advantage.

I hear it constantly: "You're from Texas? But you don't have a Texas accent." This from people who think a TX accent is the one they heard from actors on Dallas.
 
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