Halloween 2018

I spoke a little about Halloween in Spain in this post, but Halloween is not really celebrated in Spain.  Halloween is very much a North American holiday.  Spain celebrates Dia de Todos los Santos (All Saint's Day) which is November 1 -- it is a national holiday and almost all places are closed (including schools). 

In the past two years we have seen more happening for Halloween in our town but it is still very different.  Kids don't really dress up during the day, parents for sure don't.  Some older kids will go out and trick or treat at night but they don't quite understand the concept or really know how to do it -- and it is extremely late, especially given that they don't have school the next day.  And when kids do dress up, it is often in scary costumes -- think vampire, zombie, witch, etc.  There is nothing like seeing a three year old dressed up in a scary witch costume!

As in years past, we went to the amazing Trunk or Treat event on base and Serafina had an absolute blast!  She finally understood the concept of trick or treating and loved every minute of getting candy, seeing all the costumes and running around with her friends!

Then at school on actual Halloween, the younger kids got to dress up and have a parade (but parents weren't allowed to go... when in Spain, I guess).  This prompted SO MANY messages on the mom's WhatsApp group chat.  SO MANY.  Because none of the families wanted their kids to dress up as scary things.  Well, at one point I had to explain (in Spanish) to the whole group about what an American Halloween is all about -- kids (and everyone else) dresses up as whatever they want and most of the time it isn't scary.  I also got so many questions in person at drop off/pick up leading up to Halloween -- made for some really good Spanish practice!

of course I dressed up too

a true Pacific Northwest Halloween

One thing I want to note about Halloween in Spain -- we have to plan SO FAR in advance for costumes as there are no such things as costume stores in Spain.  So any ordering online is usually done at least a month in advance to ensure costumes/props, etc arrive on time.  However, this year there was a new store that opened in the closest big city (Jerez) and it was amazing -- so many costumes!  While we already had costumes, we decided to go and check it out!  Of course Serafina then wanted to be Cinderella and picked out a green fairy costume or me and a bee for Trevor.

I know my Halloween post is late -- but we left for Portugal the next day as Serafina had a four day weekend.  We had a wonderful Halloween and a post for Portugal coming soon!