Bringing Halloween down under

Halloween has come and gone with not so much as a quiet boo here in Melbourne. No decorations or stacks of candy for trick-or-treaters in the grocery store, and no trick-or-treaters! Only a mention here and there on TV, including a Halloween episode of the Simpsons. Since Australians don't really make a fuss over Halloween, Kendra (my housemate) and I decided to give them a taste of it, North American style. Last Saturday, we had a Halloween-Housewarming party, with the works--costumes, scary decorations, and candy, of course!

As cultural ambassadors, we decided to be distinctively Canadian and American in our costumes.



















And it hardly cost us a cent to put together! But the Aussies were perplexed because our costumes weren't scary. They all seemed to think that the only appropriate Halloween costumes were ghosts, goblins, witches, the grim reaper, etc.

Finding decorations took some effort. The big orange pumpkins, which are so ubiquitous in North America this time of year, are a bit of a novelty here, and we didn't find any at our local markets. So we made jack-o-lanterns with some butternut squash, which is much less amenable to carving because the entire upper half is not hollow and it's quite hard.


We learned that Aussies have adapted to the lack of jack-o-lantern pumpkins another way--carving oranges. One of our guests brought one for us. I thought that was so cute!


But eventually we acquired a proper pumpkin to carve from one of Kendra's co-workers, so we were finally content.



Here are some of the other characters that showed up...

footy player

nerd

left to right: cat, an Aussie(?), Indiana Jones, Oliver Twist

the gold digger

mardi gras parader and pirate

Now, on to Thanksgiving!