In the UK they don’t really understand the US version of Halloween, and for a long time politicians, the police and the church all regularly denounced it as a tradition that encouraged a combination of juvenile delinquency and devil worship.  At best it was described as an “unwelcome American import”.

Nevertheless, it is catching on, bit by bit, and in many neighbourhoods these days children go trick or treating.  Sometimes they are met with surprise and occasionally with anger, but usually sweeties are doled out and everyone is happy.  It doesn’t always work the way you expect, though.  At one doorstep my little daughter held out her bag and said sweetly, “Trick or treat!”

The man replied, “Oh, I should much prefer a treat, thank you!”  And then he reached into her bag, took out a sweet and thanked her again.

Even where Halloween is celebrated there is nothing like the American enthusiasm and energy for the holiday.  Pumpkins, once somewhat exotic (and still expensive), are now available in every supermarket (jack-o-lanterns used to be carved out of turnips). But on the whole, people do not erect tombstones in their front gardens or hang strings of skeleton lights or startle trick or treaters with dangling spiders.  Costumes are simple, and very repetitive: children dress as witches or devils or vampires.  No one goes as Michael Jackson, the Cat in the Hat, a pirate or a fairy princess. 

Grownups don’t answer the door in costume, and grownups don’t get invited to Halloween parties.

This was my first Halloween in the US for 30 years.  The Lawyer Sis and the Lawyer Brother-in-Law invited me to join their annual celebrations, always elaborate and coordinated.  Last year they went as Sarah Palin and a moose. 

My joining them meant, my sister insisted, that we had to come up with a costume idea for a threesome. 

And unfortunately, she added, she was useless with a sewing machine, so I would have to make the costumes for whatever threesome I decided on.  She would be in charge of props.

Here’s how we looked:

(The Duchess is the mouse on the right.  No one else was willing to wear the mouse undergarment constructed out of mattress pads, hung from the shoulders by blanket ribbon, to bulk out the suits…  Nevertheless I thought we looked pretty good – and I sewed the suits without a pattern, or rather I made my own pattern from pencil scrawls on taped together sections of the NY Times.  I thought the Lawyer Sis handled her prop brief well too.  The white canes adapted from sawn off Bo Peep crooks were inspired.)

We gathered at my brother-in-law’s brother’s house.  Since we lacked a Farmer’s Wife, his friend the Freudian Slip – who is in real life a bassoonist with the Seattle Opera – wielded the carving knife.

After mayhem we all went to Highway 99, a blues club in downtown Seattle where the brother-in-law’s brother had a gig (he’s a professional trumpet player).  I thought his girlfriend must be dressed as a groupie of some sort, or maybe a cocktail waitress, but she informed me that she was Marie Antoinette.

Osama Bin Laden – former principal trumpeter with the Seattle Symphony Orchestra – brought his own cocktail.

And the mice enjoyed a martini or two.

It was a lot of fun.  I’ve missed Halloween!

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Poor neglected blog!  For any readers I might still have I will try to do a series of catch up posts soon…