A Halloween Post-Mortem

Well, Halloween has come and gone and I hope you all had a nice one!

Since the UK doesn't really do Halloween, we attended a "Saints and Angels" party dressed as ourselves.

Only the girls came in "fancy dress" (I love British English) as angels and/or angel fairies (of course). They all sat very prettily and played very daintily while the boys (my son included) charged upstairs to play pirates and cranes. Or was it dinosaurs and swords?

Well, whatever it was, it was LOUD and involved throwing their socks from the top of the beautiful, sweeping staircase in the foyer.

Meanwhile, I found myself in an elegant living room sipping tea with the other mums and trying not to slouch too much. I asked once again if they planned to go trick-or-treating with the kids and they all looked at me as if I had just suggested that we sacrifice a goat and eat the children.

"Halloween is absolutely horrid," one mum informed me. "You go to the store for a costume and it's all blood and guts and gore. For my young children? No, thank you!"

(As a aside, the tiny selection of children's costumes here ARE awful gross...)

Then, she continued on some diatribe about Halloween being in league with Valentine's and Mother's Day as a lucrative conspiracy dreamed up by greedy card makers.

While I don't personally recall ever having sent a single Halloween card in my life, I guess some do...

As the token American and unbidden international emissary of Halloween, I explained that Halloween in my colony country isn't all headless horsemen and slutty nurses... at least, not the kids' version.

In fact, it has the potential to be really, really cute. They dress up as monkeys or lions and we take lots of pictures!

"It really does have to potential to be very nice and quite sweet", I assured them.

"Well, I guess that part of it just hasn't caught on yet in England," she conceded, "but, I still don't want any part of it" and all of the other mums murmur in agreement.

As we're leaving the party, everyone mentioned needing to stop by the store to get candy for later that night...

You know, just in case.

(I, on the other hand, bought my candy days ago. Ha! Ha!)

By 5:30 (because it gets dark here at 4 in the afternoon), we already had four groups of kids and one meter reader come by. Only a few more came around while we were having dinner and the meter reader made fun of me for answering the door with a huge bowl of candy, but otherwise it was a slow night.

Oh well. More candy for me! Me! ME!