Jon & I really love Halloween. Like really love it. After Christmas, its the one holiday we most look forward to every year! When we were dating, October 30th was our "anniversary", and we loved to throw a party to celebrate. Ask anyone whose been to one of our parties over the years - we go all out. We had an extensive Halloween decoration and costume collection that could have supplied a small store. Every year the collection grew, and got bigger and better. One year we made a life-sized witch for the lawn, made of particle board and black paint. She stood in our "graveyard" stirring her cauldron. A stuffed figure of a man sat eerily silent at the front door, hands in pockets, hat down. A giant black spider crawled over the doorbell, and footsteps and screams came from behind you, playing from a hidden stereo. Even the food was scary, and sometimes gross: green slime to drink, and goblin fingers to eat. We love Halloween for no other reason than it is the perfectly themed party night, where even the guests become a part of the decoration, filling the house with laughter and color. Its hard to not have a good time if you get to dress up.
But even without the blow-out Halloween party, October is the color of love. Theres maize mazes, hay-bale mazes, pumpkin patches, Autumn fairs, roasted corn-on-the-cob and farmed lilac honey and strings of garlic bulbs. Driving to Half-Moon Bay for the Annual Pumpkin Festival was a ruthless trip, and took hours on the weekends, but everyone does it because everyone knows itll be a great time. Walking through Santana Row on the actual Halloween night was an experience to remember. Adults in every costume, some funny, some weird, some really disturbing. But every person having a blast being someone (or something) else for just one night.
But moving to Ireland mean that we had to rid ourselves of most of our earthly possessions. We kept only the non-replaceable and very sentimental things: wedding albums, scrap books, favorite blankets, and a crock pot. Things that we just couldnt part with, or were not worth having to buy again when we moved back. Everything we kept, is graciously stored underneath our parents' houses, so there was limited room. Sadly, our Halloween collection of a lifetime was donated. Sentimental? Yes. Non-replaceable? No. Its just stuff.
So when I wanted to have a small Halloween-themed get-together this month, it was just a little sad to think about the awesome Halloweens of our past. This was the first year in a long time that we havent had our barrels of spooky stuff to choose from. And while Halloween is a pretty big deal to Americans, its a small thing to people here. At our party, one of our new friends carved the very first pumpkin of his life! Hes Jons age, and had never once stuck his hands into the slimy goodness that is a freshly butchered jack-o-lantern! Another friend there said he'd carved pumpkins at his grandparents' farm before, but in the summer, and not even for Halloween. I couldnt locate one pumpkin patch on this side of Ireland at all. I had my five little pumpkins delivered to me from a local fruit&veg seller. They're all the exact same size, and perfectly round and uniform. I miss the freakish oblong ones, the icky warty ones, the Cinderella carriage ones, and the pretty fairy-white ones.
But no matter. We celebrated Halloween Ireland style, and have the baked pumpkin seeds to prove it! It may not have had all the earmarks of what we have come to know and love about Halloween, but it was just another awesome night in our new country. We are constantly learning new things, but it was really great being the teachers for once. Happy October my fellow Americans! Enjoy every second of it for us!
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