We were unclear about French familiarity with Halloween. Do they know about it? Do they celebrate it? How do they celebrate it? Do kids come to your door looking for candy?

It made for an interesting October 31 in the south of France.

Early in the day, we saw a handful of adults wearing a prop or two (devil’s horns), or even some zombie-face makeup. At work.

Several stores seemed to be selling pumpkins and other Halloween paraphernalia, above, like masks or fake spider webs.

But we still did not know what the kids might be doing.

We found out when the doorbell began ringing at our apartment a few minutes after sundown.

The practice known as trick-or-treating apparently goes back more than a century, in North America, and something resembling “begging for food” or “warning of reprisals” may stretch back for centuries, in the British Isles.

But in France?

A former coworker, a French citizen, said that in her youth Halloween came with no connotations of canvassing the neighborhood, looking for treats. Or even dressing up.

Things have changed … in some places.

Some suggest the French love to wear costumes, and that the adult behavior may have given impetus to anglophone concepts of trick-or-treating.

We had no idea what to expect. We were in the grocery store earlier in the day, and I mulled the idea of buying extra candy — though I gave it up, figuring I’d end up eating it all myself.

However, as the sun went down I was comforted to know I had a dozen regular-size Snickers bars in the house (don’t ask), as well as an unopened bag of suckers on sticks, a package of 38. About the size of a Tootsie Pop but way more primitive.

In this part of France, houses usually do not have door bells. They do, however, have lit buttons that can be pushed that set to ringing a special telephone, upstairs in the apartment.

When that phone began jangling at 6 p.m. … I scurried to the cabinet for the suckers, and pulled the stick of Snickers out of the freezer. (Don’t ask.)

Sure enough, we had trick-or-treaters at the door. Five kids, maybe as young as 4, at least one of middle-school age. One wore a skeleton face. Another came as the Grim Reaper, complete with replica scythe.

So, we do recognize this. Except that in France, the kids in costume do not shout “trick or treat” — instead offering this choice: Des bonbons ou a sort!

Which means “candy or a spell”, in English. So, no eggs on the door, but perhaps some dire hexing no one needs in their lives.

Snickers bars were distributed to all, and all the kids said “merci!” and a couple of the older ones seemed to think they were getting a pretty good prize — and they were.

At this point, we knew the suckers were going to have to come into play, because we were down to seven Snickers bars.

The next group was littler kids, about four of them, again wearing creepy costumes, which apparently is a thing (no princesses or Batman knockoffs in these crews), and they seemed pleased to get a couple of suckers apiece. (Kind of the epitome of bonbons — or candy, in English.)

We had five groups come to our door over about 90 minutes, a total of 18-20 kids total, which seemed like a decent turnout for a town of about 600 people.

How and why they came to our door, I do not know because 1) a year ago this property was empty and 2) the door to our apartment is not on the narrow street … it’s around the corner in a tiny courtyard. But the kids found us.

Our final sorting out of things was … Snickers for the older kids, suckers for the younger, and we had two Snickers and about a dozen suckers left when it was done.

We then did the modern thing and went to Facebook to check on what had gone on with acquaintances elsewhere in France and the local area.

One woman in a nearby town that is about 10 times the size of our village reported zero trick-or-treaters, and her kids were disappointed.

But a former coworker who lives in a Paris apartment reported a steady stream of candy-seeking kids.

Another, in a German-speaking town in nearby Switzerland, had no idea the Swiss (!) are into the candy thing and felt awful because he had nothing to hand out. (No one wants to be the person with the porch light turned off.)

An Englishman who has lived just outside of Paris for two decades decided he must be in a “rough neighborhood” because the options offered by some of his trick-or-treaters were: Des bonbons ou la mort! — candy or death.

Reported our friend, in jest: “So I shot them.”

The French still take seriously All Saints’ Day, which is tomorrow, November 1, and most kids have that day off — so they can overload on candy the night before.

The trends in the past century seem to be that one country’s holidays often are picked up by other countries and lodge in their pop culture, with local twists. The willingness of global retailers to glom onto any holiday from anywhere may also contribute to this cross-pollination of festivals.

So, the French are not quite entirely on board with Halloween, but it is gaining a foothold, and let’s guess that it will be a countrywide thing in a decade or two.

We will make a point of making candy handy.