Celebrating Halloween in Provence: Our experience and the vocabulary to know
I have no memory of celebrating Halloween when I was a child.
No walking around the neighbourhood with a bag full of sweets, no pumpkin outside the house and no witch costume on October 31. Halloween simply wasn’t part of my childhood in France.
With my children, it’s completely different.
For Léo, Tom and Lily, Halloween has become an event they look forward to every year. They think about their costumes, talk about all the sweets they are going to collect and always hope they’ll be able to go out with their friends.
Between my childhood and theirs, French habits have changed a lot.
And when I welcome international students for a French immersion, especially Americans, Halloween is also a very interesting subject to talk about in French. Because we all know this celebration… but we don’t necessarily celebrate it in the same way.
Halloween in France: actually a fairly recent tradition
Halloween is an ancient celebration, but its popularity in France is much more recent.
Its name comes from the English expression All Hallows’ Eve, meaning the evening before All Saints’ Day. Its origins are generally associated with the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, celebrated around the time that now corresponds to the end of October.
But when I was a child, in the 1980s and 1990s, Halloween was still barely present in our everyday lives. The celebration really began to develop in France during the 1990s. Little by little, pumpkins appeared in shop windows, stores began selling costumes and children enthusiastically embraced the idea of going out to collect sweets.
Today, nobody in France is surprised to see little vampires, witches or skeletons in the streets on the evening of October 31. That doesn’t mean Halloween has the same place in French culture as it does in the United States. And that is precisely what makes it interesting.
My first Halloween celebration in Provence
When we first arrived in Provence, we lived in Éguilles, a village near Aix-en-Provence.
Lily was 4, Tom was 5 and Léo was 7. The village had organised a big Halloween celebration with activities and riddles for the children. As they followed the trail, they had to collect clues before putting them into a huge cauldron. If they found the correct answer, they won a cup filled with sweets.
Of course, the children loved it.
I really liked the idea too. Instead of simply handing out huge quantities of sweets, the children had to participate, search, think and play together before receiving their treats.
I have to admit that my own memory of the small community hall packed with overexcited children is a little more mixed! But they were delighted.
And in the end, that is what I remember most about our first Halloween celebration in Provence.
A few years later: Halloween in Rousset
Since 2020, we have lived in Rousset, another Provençal village.
For several years, we didn’t celebrate Halloween very much here because my children often spent the All Saints’ school holidays with my mother. Then, one year, everyone was finally home together.
And this time, Halloween also became part of the immersion experience. Robin, one of my students, was staying with us with her husband Jim. So they shared the evening with our family.
We started by visiting a few neighbours and then headed into the village. The children went from shop to shop collecting sweets while we walked with them through the streets of Rousset.
We ended the evening with dinner on the terrace of a bistro.
We weren’t “having a French lesson”. And yet French was everywhere: in conversations with the neighbours, in the shops, at the restaurant, in the children’s reactions and in all the little conversations that naturally happen during an evening like this.
Learning a language is also about understanding how people live.
And sometimes, a village celebration can teach you far more than an exercise in a textbook.
In France, a Halloween costume often has to be scary
There is one detail that always makes me smile when we talk about Halloween with people from other countries: in France, we tend to associate Halloween almost exclusively with scary things.
So on October 31, you are most likely to see witches, vampires, ghosts, zombies and skeletons.
Lily, for example, dressed up as Wednesday Addams. Tom chose a Grim Reaper costume.
Princesses, fairies and knights can of course be found in French children’s dressing-up boxes too, but we tend to associate them more with Carnival or Mardi Gras.
It’s a small cultural difference, but I love details like this.
When you learn a language, you obviously learn words and grammar. But you also discover all those little habits that nobody thinks to explain because they seem completely normal to the people who live in the country.
What does Halloween look like in a Provençal village?
If you picture Halloween in the United States, with completely decorated houses, gardens transformed into graveyards and entire neighbourhoods preparing for weeks, you might be surprised.
In Provence, it is generally much more understated. You might see pumpkins outside some houses, spiderwebs in shop windows, a few skeletons and witches, and orange and black decorations.
Shops may give sweets to children, and some towns and villages organise activities, games or parties. But just a few streets away, there may be nothing happening at all.
That is probably one of the main differences: Halloween exists in France, but everyone really decides whether they want to celebrate it… or not.
Halloween, All Saints’ Day and the school holidays
To understand Halloween in France, you also need to know another word: la Toussaint.
All Saints’ Day is celebrated on November 1 and is a public holiday in France. It is a Catholic celebration dedicated to all the saints. In everyday French life, the word Toussaint is also very familiar because French children have their vacances de la Toussaint — the All Saints’ school holidays — around this time of year.
Halloween therefore falls right in the middle of the school holidays.
For many families, October 31 is associated with children, holidays, family time and autumn activities.
It is also a good illustration of something I often tell my students: to understand certain French words, sometimes you also need to understand the culture behind them.
How do you say “Trick or Treat” in French?
Here is a very useful expression if you spend Halloween in France!
We don’t translate Trick or Treat literally in everyday conversation. Children generally say:
Des bonbons ou un sort !
You may also hear:
Des bonbons ou la vie !
But in practice, children mostly ring the doorbell and happily shout:
Des bonbons !
And normally, nobody actually casts a spell on you if you have run out.
A few words for talking about Halloween in French
French | English |
Halloween | Halloween |
la Toussaint | All Saints’ Day |
un déguisement | a costume |
se déguiser | to dress up |
une sorcière | a witch |
un fantôme | a ghost |
un vampire | a vampire |
un squelette | a skeleton |
un zombie | a zombie |
une citrouille | a pumpkin |
un bonbon | candy / a sweet |
une friandise | a treat |
un chaudron | a cauldron |
un sort | a spell |
une énigme | a riddle |
un indice | a clue |
une toile d’araignée | a spiderweb |
avoir peur | to be afraid |
faire peur | to scare |
se déguiser | to dress up |
One expression to remember
Des bonbons ou un sort !Trick or treat!
And if you are in France at this time of year, you will probably also hear:
Joyeux Halloween !Happy Halloween!
What Halloween also tells us about France today
Halloween is not an old French tradition.
And that is precisely why I find this celebration so interesting.
In just one generation, habits have changed enormously. I didn’t celebrate it when I was a child. My children, on the other hand, have grown up with costumes, pumpkins and trick-or-treating.
Culture is never fixed. It evolves, adopts new customs and transforms them in its own way.
Halloween in France is a very good example: we imported a celebration largely popularised by Anglo-Saxon culture, but today we celebrate it in our own way, often more simply and with considerable differences from one family or village to another.
And for someone learning French, noticing these small differences is also a way of stepping into everyday French life.
Learning French through everyday life
When I think back to that evening in Rousset with Robin and Jim, Halloween itself isn’t really what seems most important to me. It’s everything that happened around it.
Walking through the village. Talking to the neighbours. Going into the shops. Listening to the children. Ordering at the restaurant. Discovering a French tradition while comparing it with the traditions of your own country.
That is also what language immersion is about.
A language takes on a whole new dimension when it becomes part of a real day, an encounter, a meal or a celebration.
And if your stay in Provence happens to fall around October 31, you may well learn a few French words you had absolutely not planned on using.
Starting, perhaps, with:
Des bonbons ou un sort !
Frequently asked questions about Halloween in France
Do French people celebrate Halloween?
Yes. Halloween is now well known and celebrated in France, particularly by children and young people. However, it doesn’t have the same importance for every family and remains less deeply rooted in French culture than in some English-speaking countries.
Do French children go trick-or-treating?
They do, but it depends greatly on the town, village or neighbourhood. Some local councils and shopkeepers also organise Halloween activities or give sweets to children.
What costumes do people wear for Halloween in France?
Scary costumes remain very popular: witches, vampires, ghosts, skeletons and zombies. More festive costumes tend to be associated with Carnival and Mardi Gras.
How do you say “Trick or Treat” in French?
The best-known expression is:
Des bonbons ou un sort !
You may also hear:
Des bonbons ou la vie !
What is the difference between Halloween and All Saints’ Day in France?
Halloween is celebrated on October 31. All Saints’ Day, or la Toussaint, takes place the following day, November 1. It is a Catholic celebration and a public holiday in France.
The two events are different, even though they follow one another on the calendar.
Experience French culture rather than simply observing it
A French immersion is not just about the hours you spend studying. It is also built around all those moments you cannot really plan: a conversation with a neighbour, a village celebration, dinner on a terrace or children running through the streets in their costumes.
Those are the moments when the language becomes real.
And that is exactly what I love sharing with my students in Provence.
Would you like to learn French while truly experiencing the culture and everyday life of Provence? Discover Virginie in Provence French immersion stays.
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