It's hard to muster the eeries and the spookies on October 31 in Australia. Imagine having Halloween on Memorial Day in the US--that's essentially what it's like here. The sun sets late (around 8); pumpkins have just been planted and are months from harvest; flowers are blooming with abandon and the trees have that spring freshness to them. There's no crinkle of dead leaves, no sharp nip in the air, no harvest smells. Still, we had a great time--some things transcend hemispheres: children's love of candy, dressing up, and a license for fun.
The costume and decoration extravaganza in the US has blissfully not arrived on these shores. But we needed costumes of some sort. What we needed was an Australian Ricky's. And we found it! Fifty or so bucks later, everyone had a costume, more or less: Clare was a cowgirl, Isabella a Lady Gaga lookalike, and Emmett, what else?--Poseidon.
Halloween is close to cousin Anisha's birthday, so we double partied on the 31st, celebrating Anisha's 18th (!) and trick-or-treating. In Australia, the candy begging is strictly limited to daylight/twilight time, so after birthday cupcakes at Jillian's in Artarmon, the children set off. Twenty minutes later, a loud thunderclap followed by a spring shower brought everyone home with about 20 pieces of candy each. Perfect. Nobody over-indulged and all children were in bed at a reasonable hour. Can we celebrate Halloween like this every year?
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