Halloween in La Josefina

We were pleasantly surprised, when we passed through Latacunga last week, to find several storefronts decorated in orange and black and a few stores selling Halloween decorations and even costumes. It was surprising because Ecuadorians do not celebrate Halloween. In fact, when I asked the saleslady why she was selling pumpkins, spiders, and witches, she confessed, "We don't really celebrate Halloween here, but it has become a commercial thing." Sigh. What, I wondered, are Ecuadorians going to do with this stuff?

The answer to that question remains a mystery, but my family definitely knew what WE wanted to do: find some pumpkins, brainstorm costume ideas, decorate our house, and celebrate Halloween with our friends in La Josefina. We head straight to the open-air market to look for pumpkins. Celebrating is something that my mom has spent a lifetime modeling well. Even if a celebration was simple and/or homemade, it held intrinsic value. It was worth doing. The importance of celebration was further codified for me during the pandemic, when so many rituals and traditions were disrupted. As my mom taught me (and I hope to teach my kids), it is our responsibility to cultivate joy and make magic.

And so, without further ado, we began to plan La Josefina's first ever Halloween Party at our house, Lunes 31/10/2022, a las 5 de la tarde.

What, you might be wondering, constitutes a Halloween Party in a land without Halloween? Well, we are pretty good at improvising and convincing others to play along with us.

We had pumpkins. Yes, they were green; it was the best we could do. They turned out to be strikingly beautiful with vibrant orange meat against a green exterior. The kids did a great job designing and executing, mostly independently, and the guts of the pumpkin were way less slimy and disgusting than US pumpkin guts. We carved them on Halloween day because we were worried they would mold and be useless in hours, but they held up just fine. It was the first time in anyone's lives in La Josefina -- adults and children -- to see real life jack-o-lanterns. They were entranced.

We had decorations. Cheap plastic orange and black garlands, a few balloons, and some drawings Brynna and Jonah made. I watched a child, around ten or eleven enter our house at the beginning of the evening and exclaim, opened mouth, "Wow. How beautiful!" We also had a spider web, one of those pull apart kinds with a few plastic spiders stuck on. This web was a big hit. Dillon exclaimed, as he looked out at the web before heading to bed, "They all just loved the spider web. They loved it so much!"

We had games. We bobbed for apples and played donuts on the string. Another tip of the hat here to my mom, who introduced me to these Halloween games forty plus years ago. They never get old. Both are easy to make happen, even in Ecuador, and they generate lots of laughs. I quite enjoyed watching the kids chow down on their apples after they bobbed for them. Not a bite went to waste.

We had spooky treats and plenty of sugar. Not that sugar is ever lacking on Halloween. Thanks to the internet for creative ideas, and despite a lack of typical goods (e.g. peanut butter cups or eye ball candies), we managed to put together deviled eggs, cute Oreo bats and spiders, marshmallow ghosts, sausage fingers, and pumpkin cupcakes. All was consumed with glee.

We had a drawing contest. Dillon was the impromptu judge, and lots of kids got really into it. They sat on our living room floor and drew great pumpkins and spiders and ghosts and cats. Super fun. He awarded prizes for scariest, funniest, and best Halloween themes overall.

Thank goodness, we had plenty of excited costumed guests: a cat, several witches, a ghost, a pirate, a mummy, a bumblebee, a soccer player, a bird watching guide, . . .

We even managed a little trick-or-treating, albeit modified. I planted bags of candy at six different houses on Monday afternoon and begged the adults to play along when costumed kids arrived calling "Truco o Dulce ("Trick or Treat") later that evening. They had never distributed candy before in this manner, but they were all willing to go along with my strange plan.

One of my favorite moments of the evening was when we arrived at the first house with the planted candy. Don Leonardo and Ana were there and ready for us. However, I had forgotten to instruct them to open the big bag of candy and drop pieces individually into the kids' bags. Don Leonardo was so excited he jumped up to do his duty, but when the kids bunched up the front door, bags open, yelling "Truco o Dulce", he literally took the big bag of unopened candy and dropped it into one kids' hands. Hilarious.

The kids were not bothered. They were so happy to be trick-or-treating, something they had only ever seen on TV. Watching their excitement brought me great joy. They carried on happily to the next house, psyched by their small bags with a few lollipops and Ecua-candies.

For the grand finale, when we returned joyfully back to the casita, there was waiting for us an awesome homemade haunted room, created by Paul, with help from the boys. All the kids waited in line impatiently as one by one they were urged into a dark room, through a scary winding path (constructed with all our blankets) that included flying dead babies (with Dillon as hidden puppet master), a big eerily-lit ghost with a soccer ball head (chicken-wire + mosquito net), a touchy-feely part with eyeballs and guts and fingers (kids ate all the sausage fingers!), Paul dressed as a scary dude with bloody machete and "blood" they had to eat, and Jonah grabbing them with a slimy hand through a hidden window. I kept the scary mood up as kids queued outside to go in individually. Ecuadorians love scary stories, and the kids absolutely loved this haunted house. Even though one boy kept looping without seeing the exit, and a girl went the wrong way and spooked Paul.

Before all this came together, I was feeling sad to miss one of my favorite local events, our Annual West End Halloween Street Party and Parade. But improvisation, creativity, and best of all the excitement of the La Josefina kids to be invited to their first ever Halloween Party and first ever trick-or-treating experience carried us all through. I am particularly proud of my kids for their engagement and participation. Definitely a night we will all remember.