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 that we run into a steady stream, but it's not overwhelming. Also, we know a lot of the people because, small village. So it has a very nice community feel to it. And the kids get enough candy to feel like a lot, but not so much as to be obscene. And the decorations are generally not really scary--definitely a plus for this highly sensitive family.

Overall, it's the funnest Halloween experience we've ever had. I don't love the holiday in general, but here it's really fun!

This year Eric and I accompanied a Eurostar train (the pic above is not actually on Justin, and is only partial because by this time we had lost the Eiffel Tower, but you can see Big Ben and the train...), an angel, and a skeptical and rather grumpy baby. Justin said it was his last year, so hopefully Katie will be Rebecca's buddy next year...