That was Halloween

Hal­loween is a big deal here in Van­couver, at least if you have chil­dren. In New Zea­l­and (at least while I was grow­ing up) we did­n’t cel­eb­rate Hal­loween at all so it was­n’t until I got to Canada and had chil­dren that it became part of the yearly cycle.

Hal­loween here has three parts: dec­or­a­tions, cos­tumes, and events. The dec­or­a­tions are the easy part, because I have neither time nor inclin­a­tion to go over­board. Jack­’o’lan­terns are com­puls­ory; I bought a bat­tery-oper­ated pump­kin from a vari­ety store a couple of years ago which is re-used every year, and Tim and our son carved two pump­kins on the week­end before Hal­loween (if you carve them too early, they go mouldy and mushy before Hal­loween arrives, des­pite attempts at pre­ser­va­tion). Then with assor­ted dol­lar-store-style extras such as plastic bats and spiders, and sheets of plastic prin­ted with witches and skel­et­ons, our son and I made it obvi­ous that we were going to take part in the Hal­loween tra­di­tion of trick-and-treat. If you put up dec­or­a­tions in Van­couver, then you’re expec­ted to also hand out candy on Hal­loween; if you don’t want to hand out candy, then you don’t put up the dec­or­a­tions. Since this is a film town, lots of people go over­board and the loc­al paper lists the best ones to go and see, much like they do for Christ­mas lights later in the year. All too much for me to do, although it’s fun to see what people come up with each year and to guess which film they might be props from or inspired by.

Cos­tumes in my fam­ily were easy this year as well; our son got a mask a couple of years ago that he loves, so with that and a dark sweat­shirt and dark trousers he was set. The baby got a red sleep­er and some red dev­il’s horns to match; the horns had black fake fur at the bot­tom which lent an incon­gru­ous touch on her almost-bald head and most people thought she looked cute rather than scary. Tim and I did­n’t dress up for Hal­loween although Tim did get face­paint for the Parade on the 28th. Vis­it­ors to the door were mostly dressed for sports (ice hockey, soc­cer) or as fair­ies or Dis­ney-style prin­cesses. We mostly have young­er kids show­ing up, so there were a few anim­als as well.

Tim went drum­ming at the Parade of Lost Souls on Sat­urday 28th; I made some acerbic com­ments about bal­an­cing it with the found souls, but All Saint’s Day isn’t cel­eb­rated (or, I sus­pect, even known about by many people) so one could won­der where the Lost Souls go to be found. Van­couver does have its pagan-cel­eb­ra­tion side, and it was out in full force on that night. Many of the cos­tumes were ima­gin­at­ive and com­plex, some simple. The baby was fas­cin­ated by it all and not the slight­est bit scared by any of the appar­i­tions passing in front of her stroller. I did­n’t see any polit­ic­al cos­tumes here, although I gath­er they’re pop­u­lar in the US, par­tic­u­larly in an elec­tion year. Choos­ing the wrong cos­tume can, how­ever, cre­ate problems.

Hal­loween even­ing itself was dry, for­tu­nately. I got the candy a couple of weeks before, a total of around 150 mini­ature bars and pack­ets (about a quarter of the usu­al candy bar size). The gro­cery stores here must sell a heap of these at this time of year; no child or par­ents will accept home-baked stuff or fruit, ever since vari­ous threatened or actu­al pois­on­ing incid­ents. Even this year, some idi­ot in Van­couver put Tylen­ol in bags for kids, so par­ents always have to go through the bags and check everything their chil­dren were giv­en. Any­way, our son went off with the neigh­bours and their chil­dren, after being so excited he could barely eat any din­ner, about 6 pm. The pump­kins were lit, the lights out­side on, and the first trick-and-treat­ers arrived about the same time. Some­times I like to ask what they’re meant to be, the num­ber of kids who can­’t give a coher­ent answer is remark­ably high, they tend to be con­cen­trat­ing on the candy and mind­ful that they need a cos­tume to get it than any­thing else. Friends with a baby who live in a condo vis­ited us that even­ing; vis­it­ors were greeted by one or two babies depend­ing on the tim­ing. It was fun, our son arrived home around 7:30 pm as the num­ber of trick-and-treat­ers arriv­ing was declin­ing, our vis­it­ors took their baby home, we blew out the tea-lights in the pump­kins, turned off the out­door lights, and sent a happy boy off to bed (after that first bit of candy, of course). He now has enough candy to last him until next year — we ration his candy to one piece per day (two if they’re small).

Now the Hal­loween dec­or­a­tions have been taken down and packed away for next year, the dis­carded pump­kins are in the com­post bin, and the stores are full of Christ­mas dec­or­a­tions. The cycle continues.