Halloween

It was our first Halloween here in London, and it was honestly not that different, but here is what I noticed:

🎃 There was less hype about it. Less decorations on homes and in stores, less talk about it, and just overall less talk leading up to it.

🎃 The grocery stores weren't overrun with Halloween candy starting in August. Actually, it was kind of hard to find large quantities of candy to hand out. (In all honesty, we didn't end up handing out candy because we knew we would be gone for most of the evening.)

🎃 It's traditional ring the doorbell trick-or-treating. In Colorado, our neighborhood had changed to candy in a bowl in your driveway or scattered in the front yard during Covid, and we never went back to old school trick-or-treating. Here, we had to find the houses with lights on or jack-o-lanterns out and ring the doorbells. It was fun to watch the kids interact.

🎃 Costumes were overall scarier and less individualized. It seemed like in the States, kids pick their favorite things and dress up as that. Here it was more general - more witches, less superheroes. More Scream masks, less blow up dinosaurs.

🎃 The candy handed out was not as big in quantity or size. I was looking back at pictures from Colorado Halloweens and there was a year my less than 5 year old kids got 25 full sized candy bars! Yikes! Whereas here, they got enough candy to last about a week and it was mostly lollipops and gummy worms.

🎃 London did pretty quickly start transitioning to Christmas after Halloween, but it isn't as 'in your face' as some stores in the States. Most areas waited to turn on Christmas lights until this weekend (mid-November) and I can go into a store without having Christmas in my face. In London's defense, they don't have Thanksgiving to contend with so I can see the desire to beat the dark winter evenings with the joy of the holidays already. (It already gets dark by 4:30 here.)

Overall, we had a lot of fun! It was less pressure, and I was grateful to come home with way less candy than previous years. It did rain pretty much the whole evening, but the kids didn't mind at all. I didn't bring their trick-or-treat buckets when we moved, thinking I could grab some here, but I didn't. Oops. R opted to use a pillow case which he was really excited about, and I had a couple of paper grocery bags C and G used. PSA: don't use a paper bag when it's rainy...C's bag got a whole in the bottom when we were about halfway through. Thankfully I noticed before all the candy had fallen out but I think there were a few casualties.

Oh, funny story. C was lagging behind the boys a bit, and she went up to a door that had it's outside light on. When she rang the doorbell, an elderly man answered the door, obviously not expecting trick-or-treaters, but C was standing there in her princess dress soaked from the rain and he just couldn't turn her away. He went to his kitchen and brought back a banana for her. It was the sweetest moment of the whole experience and that banana made her day.

Nick did get asked "Are you dressed as Father Christmas?".

And now, we're onto our first Thanksgiving here. I'll keep you posted as I go on a quest to find a turkey.