Fall in
CNY has always been a howling good time for me.
October brought my birthday, changing leaves, temperatures dropping, and of course all of the fun that surrounds Halloween.
Fast forward to my life at the moment and I am so out of sorts that I almost forgot my birthday (not to mention my wife’s, who also has a birthday in October…don’t tell her!). First, it is spring on the cusp of summer here. The temperatures are soaring; it was a wickedly warm 99 on Saturday (one of the top 3 hottest October days ever)! The leaves on the trees are blooming and growing, not changing colors and falling. Instead of spending my time at the pumpkin patch, I am at the beach…which admittedly, isn’t the worst trade off. To top it all off the stores are stocked with Christmas things instead of Halloween. Not only have they jumped the cue for Halloween, but for Thanksgiving as well, since neither holiday is celebrated here!
You see they don’t really celebrate Halloween here. In fact, it’s really not properly understood. Not that I really understand the holiday. I mean, for me it is always a time to dress up in something silly to get free candy. That’s what it is all about, isn’t it?
So when this time of year rolls around it can be hard to instill the great Halloween traditions in our kids when we are the only people in our neighborhood who celebrate the holiday. Stepping up to the aggressive American stereotype we decided to impose a bit of our culture on the locals and introduce them to Halloween…the best we could!
First step was to find some Halloween decorations. There are very few shops that sell an item or two that represent Halloween, but they are usually very scary and demonic. We have found that the overall impression Aussies have of the holiday is blood and gore, and with the shops selling wares that imply this, it is hard to convince otherwise. So my crafty wife got out the construction paper and began to do some Halloween crafts with the kids. We have silly spiders, pretty pumpkins, and wacky witches all over. Not to mention a lot of glitter everywhere from the craft session!
Carving pumpkins is also not an option here. They sell a variety of squash in Australia and call it pumpkin, but to find a nice, big, orange pumpkin is out of the picture. So we had to design our own out of construction paper. As a side note, they do put pumpkin on everything…pizza, eggs, as a common side dish, it’s very yummy.
Next step was to find some costumes. This task was not as hard to do, but a bit more expensive. We had to raid the dress up clothes aisle in the toy store and the selection was limited and pricy. My daughter was easily pleased to be a princess, but my son...who hates clothes...had to be convinced to wear a mummy costume my wife created out of ripped sheets. Did I mention already how crafty she was?
Finally, we had to find some candy…or lollies as they call them here, to pass out. There is no abundance of little snack size candy treats here. We had to hunt for some kind of mini-chocolate to pass out.
To help our Aussie friends understand Halloween as we know it, my wife bravely hosted two Halloween parties last year. The first was a morning monster mash for all the little ghouls. And you know what; it was a graveyard smash that caught on in a flash! This was followed up with an afternoon party for all the kids in the neighborhood. They loved it! There were spooky snacks and terrifying tunes. She created pin the nose on the pumpkin games and they decorated creepy cookies to look like jack-o-lanterns. They read spooktacular books and then they trick-or treated the best they could with all the mummies handing out treats. I’m not sure that they really got it, but everyone left with a full bag of candy and a smile on their face. I even got to munch on a “pizza mummy”!
This year we decided to pair up with our friends from America and really show them what Halloween is about. Our friend Sylvia offered to host the event and found it easier to order Halloween décor for the party online. She actually found a company that would ship to Australia. This in itself is a remarkable achievement as it is not uncommon to find companies that will not deliver to Oz. She ordered costumes for all so this year my kids have proper costumes of Tinkerbelle and Peter Pan. There will be more spooky snacks and ghoulish games. Sylvia even decided to arm her neighbors with instructions on how trick-or-treating works. All so the kids can have an official trick-or-treat session.
We are looking forward to leaving our mark, and maybe the tradition will continue after we’re gone!
Have a safe and happy Halloween everyone!
