Little Rascals in ABQ

Seeing Halloween in the American movies and series planted some pictures in our head on what to expect. Creepy costumes, houses totally decorated with scary stuff and people who scare you…Or is that me intoxicated by Hollywood?? So walking into “home depot” and “Halloween spirit” (it’s a store) made us looking forward to see all the decorated houses. But actually in our street there are like 12 houses but only 2 were decorated and then there was us. We did buy some decoration and Marlo and Nolan really liked our inflatable cat! But it is expensive to decorate so we didn’t go over the top. In the neighborhood there were some houses that did a great job decorating and passing those houses the boys were getting more excited everyday for going trick and treating.

The weekend before Halloween there were a lot of Trunk and Treats in the community. It’s the safe way for the kids to go to one location and pass the different themed cars to get their treats. We were booked in the weekend so we didn’t go to one of them, but I like this kind of celebrating!

On Halloween day Nolan and Marlo did go to school as a fire fighter and ninja. Nolan had a great party at his school. We played games and there was food! Nolan drank fanta and ate some Oreo spiders and fruits at 10.30AM, which meant he was jumpy on sugar early in the morning but as it’s a holiday he better take advantage of that. Before I arrived at school they already went trick and treating at the neighbors from the school. Of course our candy fan Nolan wanted to have some candies during school time, but as he had to wait until the school was dismissed, Nolan was put to the test for his patience. Marlo’s Halloween was doing a lot of crafts at school. He came home with a hand of popcorn, a skeleton and a pumpkin. He had a fun day too.

We didn’t know the rules for trick and treating… so what to do??
An event at the Haynes Park was organized called harvest festival. We went early because they told us it was going to be very busy. There were some big jumpers/slides for the boys, a hayride and many games to play where the kids would get treats when finishing them. Some friends joined us at the park and as it became busy pretty fast we had to stand in line for 10 minutes before they could play the next game and earn some treats. So after 45 minutes Marlo asked us to go trick and treating instead. So we did…

We went to the neighborhood of our friends and went trick and treating together. Luckily our friends knew the “rules”. These are not really rules, but people rather will follow some guidelines. One of the most important one is “Not to go trick or treating at a house that is dark on the outside and has no decoration”. These houses we would just pass, while at houses with their outdoor lights on Marlo and Nolan ran with their friends to ring the doorbell. The boys were really excited to experience Halloween for real now. Marlo asked me “so This is Halloween!!! Why is this holiday mom? You just go to houses and get candy?” And I didn’t have an answer to his question as we only know it being an American tradition from watching American movies and series.

So what is the true meaning behind Halloween? If you start looking on the internet you will not find one answer. You will find that it was a “”Celtic festival commemorating the end of summer and harvest and the start of winter“. They believed it was the time when the boundaries of the worlds of the living and dead became blurred. During the festival, people would light bonfires to ward off ghosts.”
I like that explanation. It’s a little bit the way the Mexican celebrate their ant sisters at Dia de los muertos (day of the dead) like in the movie Coco (which I really love, also after watching it 15 times already with Marlo and Nolan) I think Halloween in America has changed a lot in 1900’s, but in the end we had an amazing and fun day we will remember! And the boys will enjoy their candy for some months?!?!