This is (sort of like) Halloween

Halloween is by far one of my favorite Anglo holidays. For me, it’s much more than candy-induced sugar highs and trashy corner-store costumes. It’s all about the fall…the sound of dead leaves rustling in the wind, seeing your breath hang on the air, the smell of cider and freshly carved pumpkins, bright harvest moons and the patter of excited children scurrying up and down the pavement with bags full of candy. But—as with so many American holidays—this is not what the rest of the world thinks when they think Halloween. So, when I was informed that the Spanish are generally unaware of the richer aspects of my favorite holiday, you can imagine just how determined I became to share Halloween with them in all of its glory.

Since Erica and I don’t work on Fridays (and we clearly won’t see the kids on Saturday), we decided to make Thursday the school’s official Halloween day! First, we told everyone that if they wore orange, black, or brown during the day and then found us at recess, we would give them candy. Mistake number one. I don’t know if you’ve recently witnessed kids around free candy, but it looked like we were making our own little horror movie in the hallways. I just about lost a limb. The little buggers swarmed me yelling “trick or treat,” violently flashing orange and black and trying to dupe me into believing that I had not in fact just given them candy two minutes ago. Sinister.

The second phase of the day went a little more smoothly. I ended up showing my classes the song “The is Halloween” from Tim Burton’s “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” and it was a huge success. My mother had generously sent me pumpkin peeps in a package the week before, so I used them as prizes to see who could fill in blanks and explain the vocabulary in the song. I’ve never seen people more excited to eat peeps! I tried to explain that for us, peeps were more of a morbid fascination than culinary delight, but I think they are actually much better suited to the Spanish pallet than I had anticipated. All-in-all, it was a great almost-Halloween, and I’m looking forward to tomorrow to see what craziness might be done in Madrid the name of a foreign holiday. Happy Halloween, everyone!