France

We don’t typically celebrate Halloween in France. In the 1990s, young French hipsters started to have costume parties for Halloween, and some bars and restaurants took up the trend as well.

Halloween In France – A Good Commercial Opportunity

So Halloween is not a typical French holiday but stores try to take advantage of it, and it’s not unusual to find a “carve your Halloween pumpkin (“une citrouille” or “un potiron”) display at your local grocery store.

Well, pumpkins don’t sell like hotcakes in France, so I guess everything is good to try to sell them… But I don’t know that French people are massively carving pumpkins or doing anything special for Halloween…

Halloween Is A Fun Way To Motivate French Kids To Practice English

With English being studied in elementary school, kids usually know about Halloween. There are many fun activities that can be done on the Halloween theme, and candies are sufficient motivation for any kid in the world!

Unfortunately, Halloween is usually during mid-season school break (“les vacances de la Toussaint”), so schools don’t usually organize a trick-or-treating outing.

Although some neighborhoods are more responsive than others, trick-or-treating is not yet part of the French tradition, and people have mixed reactions to being “disturbed’ at nightfall for candies by kids in costumes.

How Do You Say “Trick Or Treat” In French?

Well… you don’t!

The whole point being to have French kids use a few English words… But a good translation would be:

“des bonbons ou un sort” (candies or a spell),
“bêtises ou friandises” (mischiefs or sweets).