Let's Talk About Halloween in the UK

Halloween Past:

Sleeping Beauty and Harry Potter, 2009

Coaches from the past, 2009

Black Eye Pea, Deviled Egg, Luke Skywalker, and Ariel, 2010

Adorable little Bunny and a scary Spider, 2008

So I have to admit that I have been really homesick lately. I miss my parents, and I miss my country and all of our customs and way of life, especially now that the holidays are coming around.

In the past we have done BIG Halloweens. We always dress up, we always make it fun and special for the kids, and we always have a great time pretty much for the entire month of October. We go to Schnepf farms, we go to or have parties, we always go Trick or Treating. Typically on Halloween night, we have a firepit, an outdoor movie, our house is completely decorated out front, and we hand out GOOD candy.

So that pretty much doesn't happen here. We were invited to a party, but Jon is out of town in Bulgaria until just one day before Halloween. There are many people that just don't do Halloween at all. Most of them think it's an over-commercialized American holiday, and they're right. But, I say, who cares? It's about having fun, it's a necessarily a true holiday, just an excuse to have fun. There are zero outdoor decorations, and there is very little to buy in the stores. What there is to buy is very...cheesy, kind of like what you would find at Walgreens. We live in a neighborhood with a ton of kids, so we have been told that there is lots of Trick or Treating and we have been told not much, so we aren't really sure what to expect there. I did buy some candy, but again, not nearly like the candy that we would hand out at our house in Arizona. So, I bought good Christmas candy, chocolates, etc.

Here, we've gotten lots of comments about the kids' costumes. Joe is going as his new obsession, Dr. Who. Joci is going as Belle from Beauty and the Beast. Typically, when people hear what Joci is, they make a comment about it not being scary at all. From what I've seen in the stores, most of their costumes are of the scary variety, and more traditional, witches, zombies, etc., lots of blood and gore and fake limbs.

So we are adapting. We aren't doing many decorations, except for a few little arts and crafts inside the house. The kids are still dressing up and going Trick or Treating, and I hope it works out and they have a good time. We are going to a little amusement park that is having a haunted Halloween party, and I am letting the kids wear their costumes to that as well. We have already bought our pumpkins, and so we will also carve those. We bought the biggest ones we could find, which still seem like a medium to small size in the states. We will absolutely still make roasted pumpkin seeds...yum.

So, we will still have a lot of fun, just different. We're bringing some of ours, and taking part of some of theirs, and meeting in the middle. Hopefully, it will help with the homesickness and with Thanksgiving around the corner, we can find our groove with the holidays.