Halloween in London is kind of rubbish

As those of us who are American know, Halloween is pretty much a major holiday in our country (I've always thought we should have the day off of work on Halloween, actually). For me, it's my favorite holiday, closely followed by Christmas. I love to get dressed up and I love to have Halloween parties and to carve pumpkins, etc. etc.

Unfortunately, England doesn't embrace Halloween in the same way. Yesterday one of our neighbors disdainfully called it an "American import" (although, according to research I did last year when trying to get my class excited about Halloween, it actually started in Ireland and Scotland...but I didn't feel like getting into that discussion)and warned us that if we didn't turn our lights off and pull in our pumpkin by 7pm, we would have gangs of un-costumed teenagers on our door step. We were going to force a festive Halloween, by having a Halloween party, but that didn't work out either for a number of reasons attributed to our potential guests (illnesses, funerals, out of town, half term break, etc.) so we thought that the least we could do was buy some candy and carve a pumpkin.

Jim had planned to come home early to help me with carving the pumpkin, but since it gets dark these days around 4pm, I took on the challenge by myself. Admittedly, a pumpkin carved by me is inferior to a pumpkin carved by Jim. I lack his patience and artistic talent, but it turned out ok. For the record, Jack the Cat was VERY freaked out by my pumpkin carving. I think he thought I was butchering some animal on the dining room table or something.


Our first trick or treater looked very familiar to me. He said his costume was "Crazy Newspaper Head Bamboo Mustache Man":


We tried to get the cats involved in the festivities (They were to be "Super Cats"). Jack wasn't very keen on wearing his costume:


But eventually I got him to fly:


Finchley will tolerate any humiliating experience, as long as food is involved:


We DID get some real trick-or-treaters--cute kids in little witch and devil costumes with their parents. And, in memory of Buster's hot dog costume, we also met a dog who was dressed as a skeleton. He didn't seem to mind it as much as Buster minded being a hot dog. And we're going to reschedule our Halloween Party. It will be an "In Memory of Halloween" party (because Halloween as we have known it prior to living in England is actually becoming a distant memory.)

Happy Halloween!