You know what's great about America? During fall and winter, we have a holiday on average every 4 weeks. Halloween...Thanksgiving...Christmas... In France, Halloween is not common, and Thanksgiving is not celebrated. But, we decided that, since our girls are American, they should celebrate Halloween. So we did.
In order to be correctly celebrated, Halloween has to be a community thing. Here, if it is observed, it is mostly by families with young children, ie the people doing the receiving of the candy. While we were out this evening, I saw several cases of families or groups of kids knocking on door after door and getting no answer. Because the older generations, those who would otherwise be giving the candy, don't celebrate Halloween. Because it's an importand holidy and therefore a recent addition and they're just not used to celebrating it. We crossed paths with one mom pushing a stroller and accompanying a young witch. She asked, "You having any luck?" I smiled and said, "We're only going to houses where we know the people and where we've warned them ahead of time." We talked to Thomas's parents and grandma and a couple of friends yesterday and asked them if we could stop by with our little princess(es). They said sure. Somehow, we didn't get a picture of the princess in her costume, but you've seen the princess and the costume in a previous post.
Alina made out like a bandit. Her grandparents and great-grandma, either because they didn't quite understand the concept, or because they were purposefully avoiding candy, got her presents. The neighbors who gave us our cat included a few candies, but also another present. And the other neighbors decided that since Alina wouldn't be visiting very many houses, they would single-handedly make her trick-or-treating worthwhile.
Since we were perpetuating American traditions, I made chocolate chip cookies this afternoon. We left a little packet of cookies everywhere we stopped. That's a bit atypical as far as Halloween behavior is concerned, but I felt good about making the whole thing sort of an exchange. Anyway, a good time was had by all. The only downside is that our pumpking somehow ended its short life splattered on the street. We're not sure if it did that itself or if it had some help. Oh, well.
1 comment:
halloween in france? trick or treating? i am stunned. what a great idea though, getting others involved, telling people you were coming. i hope the family enjoyed it.
we went for the first time in the streets. my boys just ran from house to house. they loved it. all the candy, what am i going to do with all the candy?
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