I always found it ironic that Halloween is my favorite holiday even though I’ve only had one true Halloween: in Virginia in 1996.
I vividly remember the haunted house in our neighbors’ garage, bobbing for apples, graveyard brownies and candy corn, carving pumpkins and trick-or-treating, kicking up fall leaves as I went.
When I left the United States and moved to Peru, my kindergarten teacher asked me to explain “American Halloween,” seeing as I was the only student in my class who had lived in the States. I tried my best to describe trick-or-treating, costumes, pumpkin carving and candy corn.
My classmates proceeded to only talk about “U.S. Halloween,” and my teacher tried her hardest to have a “U.S.” celebration. She didn’t find a pumpkin, but she was able to bring candy corn from overseas and create a sort of ‘trick-or-treat’ path for us around the school, as we trekked in our costumes, kicking up sand as we went.
All my other Halloween memories are in Brazil, where the holiday is barely celebrated.
We don’t really have pumpkins — they are hard to find and somewhat expensive — and candy corn is nothing but another U.S. candy left to the imagination.
Kids tend to dress up, but being in a city makes it hard to go trick-or-treating around your block, so they’ll circulate the building they live in. There are almost no decorations, and as summer approaches, the weather is warm and rainy.
This is why “American” Halloween was on the top of my “Why Going to College in the United States Rocks” list.
I remember my softball coach telling me towards the end of senior year, “You’re going to love Halloween in college,” and I have.
I was able to play in the fall leaves, I baked graveyard brownies, ate pumpkin seeds, got sick off candy corn, bought a costume, decorated my room and carved my first pumpkin in years.
Naturally, I put the photos of the historic moment up on Facebook and received the following comment from a friend of mine who goes to school in Holland: “So jealous, the Dutch don’t commemorate Halloween!”
It was then that I became curious about other types of Halloween around the world, and not just the Western, Americanized version I grew up idealizing and loving.
In Latin America and Spain, “Dia de los Muertos,” known here as All Soul’s Day, is a three-day celebration from Oct. 31 to Nov. 2 that celebrates and honors the dead, who are believed to return to their homes on Halloween. Families will construct altars in their homes for the dead, and decorate them with food, flowers, candy, photos and candles.
China and Japan do not celebrate traditional Western Halloween, but they do hold festivals that are similar in themes and ideas.
The Chinese celebrate Teng Chieh, a lights festival where lanterns in the shapes of animals are hung on streets and households, to protect people from evil spirits. Like in Latin American, the dead are celebrated, honored and given food and water.
The Japanese celebrate Obon, a festival that honors and celebrates the spirits of deceased ancestors. Red lanterns are hung and set into rivers to guide spirits back to their family’s homes and birthplaces.
“American” Halloween is still my favorite, and nothing can replace the special place it holds in my heart, but I now realize that I should have enjoyed the different celebrations when I lived abroad and not attempted to find candy corn and carve pumpkins everywhere I went.
I’ll continue to enjoy my next three Halloweens, but plan to one day make up for the culture and experience I have lost.
jgreenwald@theeagleonline.com
