Trick-or-Treating in Rural England
Hello and Happy Halloween! Also, we had a baby! More on that later, but first a summary of Halloween in the Cotswolds. The short version: Halloween in a small rural English village is really fun! The longer version: All our older neighbors tell us that Halloween here is a relatively recent import from America. When they were little, no one celebrated. Now, though, in both our old village and our current one, enough people celebrate to make it really fun. We have learned English Halloween etiquette: only knock if you see a light on and a pumpkin in the front. This makes it so fun, like a giant, village-wide seek and find. We wander up and down all the old, narrow streets, searching for pumpkins. I'd say maybe 10% of houses have them, so you sometimes walk quite a ways down dark streets (no streetlights!) to be finally rewarded by the sight of a smiling jack-o-lantern nestled on the front porch of a 300-year-old cottage. Enough people are out th