For the past 11 years running, we’ve celebrated Halloween with scores of friends around the world, many of whom had never dressed up in a Halloween costume or joined a Halloween party before. Given my love (mildly putting it) for Halloween ever since I was a little guy, I’ve always wanted our son to grow up with a chance to enjoy the festivities as well, even if the traditions and customs couldn’t exactly be replicated wherever we lived. But in order to do so, I quickly learned that I would need to step up my holiday game and do something I never needed to do when I lived in the US— organize Halloween!
You see, Halloween and especially its most famous custom of trick-or-treating is just something that happens in the US, without anyone needing to really organize anything except to buy candy and prepare costumes. Sure, I have American friends who host incredible Halloween parties every year and who also spend significant time and money decorating their homes, but similar to Christmas and other holidays, Halloween happens in America regardless if you organize something or not. This is not true however when you live in places where folks don’t celebrate Halloween.
In the four countries we’ve lived in since 2011— Myanmar, Nepal, Egypt and Thailand— none have much going on at all with Halloween with the exception of Bangkok, where the large expat community fuels plenty of commercial holiday activity. But I’m happy to share that in each place we’ve lived, we’ve taken up the challenge and have made Halloween come alive in even the unlikeliest of settings. And the parties we’ve hosted over the years have far exceeded my own hopes and expectations, making Halloween more special to me now than it was when I was a kid.
Because we’ve lived abroad since our son was 8 months old, Kai has grown up with his own unique experiences of Halloween, and to see him change over the years at these parties has been so fun as a parent. At the same time, we’ve also been able to introduce our version of Halloween with friends, colleagues and neighbors who wouldn’t likely have an opportunity to experience it otherwise, and this has been so special too. Imagine for a moment how incredibly cool it is to be able to share in the fun with friends who are Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims… and who live in tropical, subtropical and Mediterranean climates, without an autumn to speak of! In other words— you’re not in Kansas (or Ohio!) anymore! 🙂
So as I was taking down the decorations from yet another successful party, I got inspired to share some reflections on how we as a trio have celebrated this annual event in each country we’ve lived. And since a picture paints a thousand words and then some, I also thought share a few photos to give you a taste of what our Halloween shenanigans have looked over the years, with “taste” being a very appropriate choice as many of our best Halloween memories involve both food and food costumes! 🙂
Myanmar— Neighborhood and student fun
Although we were in Yangon (formerly Rangoon) for only one Halloween, Kai’s very first Halloween party was a very special one indeed. We lived in a small community compound of five homes, and four of the homes had kids all about the same age as Kai who was 18 months old at the time. We were all close because of this, and it was also such a wonderful cross-cultural group as the four families represented six nationalities— American, British, Irish, Japanese, Swedish, and Tajikistani! On the big night the kids looked darling of course in their costumes but as all parents know, toddlers aren’t necessarily too keen in dressing up, and even the most innocuous of costumes can frighten kids more than you might expect. Granted it must have been confusing for Kai to see his dad dressed up as a waitress and his mom dressed up as a blonde waitress!! But it was so much fun to take our little hamburger (“Kai Burger”) and his buddies around the compound for their first ever trick-or-treating session, and at least the parents had a great time at the party. 🙂
In addition to hosting a party for the little ones, we also hosted a party for my students and teaching colleagues. I was teaching a course on Cultural Studies at the time so it was a perfect opportunity to introduce my Burmese students to Halloween. And what a blast we had! We decided to go for a costume parade where students strutted their stuff around our place and soon enough it became a full-out dance party, featuring the likes of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” and several Burmese pop hits as well.
The night made me realize that you should never underestimate the power of a let-your-hair-down event like Halloween to bring people closer together. There’s no doubt that I felt much more sense of community in my class immediately after that party, and ten years later, my former students still write to me about how special that night was.
Nepal— Colleague and community fun
When it comes to making Halloween a real community event, I can’t think of a better example than Halloween 2013 in Damak, Nepal. It was such a special night for so many reasons, and one of them was that our dear friend Karina was visiting us and was able to join in our party festivities. The last time we celebrated Halloween in the US was with Karina in 2010, in her “tiny bit huge” city of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Portsmouth has one of the most fantastic Halloween celebrations you can imagine, with an annual outdoor parade that features some of the most imaginative and funny costumes I’ve ever seen. And with our long mutual love for Halloween and all things pumpkin, it was great that Karina (the lobster you see here) was with us.
Another reason this Halloween was so special was that my dear brother Bhesraj and friends from Damak Public Library also joined in the festivities, and their reactions throughout the night to all the costumes and merry-making were just priceless. They joined our mutual friends, the colleagues and families of the two international organizations that helped assist the refugees who lived in camps nearby— the UN Refugee Agency and the International Organization for Migration. Under one roof, the guesthouse where we often met for dinner, we gathered for a laughter and smile-filled party where many were celebrating Halloween for the first time, and by the end of the evening, we were making our very own Halloween traditions (karaoke!) and all the while talking about how cool it was that we could all be together to do this. Since I was a teacher in Nepal as well, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to MC my first Halloween trivia contest, giving me a chance to teach everyone a bit more about the history and customs of my favorite holiday which in fact has its origins in Ireland, where my dear Grandpa O’Brien was born before immigrating to America.
We’ve never felt a truer sense of community than in Damak. And I’ve learned over the years that although there are more things to do in a big city, there are often more things to appreciate in a small town. I’ll never forget walking through our town’s main market with Kai to find a perfect pumpkin to carve, saying “Namaste” to the merchants and receiving such warm smiles in return. Then we would head to the library on our trusty bicycle, with a special front seat installed for Kai (thanks Son Ha!), and I’d sit and talk with Bhesraj and his family while Kai would sit down to read a couple of books, usually locally printed paperbacks titled “Moral Stories” which were full of cute pictures and familiar stories about being trustworthy, honest and kind.
We ended up celebrating Halloween three times in Nepal and each party was such a treat, especially so because the parties were a wonderful mix of Nepalese and expat friends. Coincidentally, two of Nepal’s biggest festivals, Dashain and Tihar (or Diwali, the Festival of Lights), are also celebrated in autumn, so it was awesome to participate in several different cultural celebrations one after another. The Festival of Lights is an especially magical celebration and I came to love its traditions so much. A couple of days after the Halloween party I described above, I was walking around Damak with a group of my students on one night and with a group of my library friends on another, stopping at homes to dance and sing traditional songs called “Deusi” and “Bhailo.” In return for the entertainment we provided, community members shared food, sweets and money as well as blessings for prosperity. And I couldn’t help but think this custom was a bit like a merger of trick-or-treating and Christmas caroling, only much more animated. 🙂
Egypt— School kid fun
When we moved to Alexandria, Egypt, Kai started going to school and this changed the dynamics of our Halloween parties for the years to come. I mean, we’ve always focused a lot less on the “scare” and a lot more on the fun, but I quickly learned that if you throw a Halloween party and the participants are mostly 5 to 10 year olds, you better have some activities to keep them occupied, unless of course you don’t mind a group of kids running and screaming randomly around your place all afternoon. (Note to future parents: this running/screaming is inevitable anyway, so that’s why you need plans to keep them engaged for as long as possible!) Fortunately both the teacher and the kid in me was very much up to the challenge, and I started doing quite a bit of prep work in advance of Halloween to make the parties as densely packed with activities as I could. (Another note to future parents: you will have far more activities planned than actualized, and most of the actualized ones won’t go as planned anyway, but that’s ok).
Of all the activities we’ve rolled out at these parties, probably the biggest hit has been Halloween Bingo because everyone understands bingo and everyone is happy to play successive rounds of it if there are prizes. Another fun activity is having the kids draw their own Jack-‘o’-lanterns on construction paper. It’s so simple but it looks really cute when they’re all held up in a group picture, and it’s a nice personalized take-home gift for their parents too. Some of the more adventurous activities I’ve tried to do include teaching kids to sing the song “Have you seen the Ghost of John?” Let’s just say that teaching a song is a lot harder than you think it’s going to be, and especially when you have the brilliant idea to break them up into small groups as sing it as a round (good luck, haha!!) An extension activity of the song that I tried once is to have the kids write down on paper what they think happened to the Ghost of John (or, how did John become a ghost?) and challenge them to come up with creative scenarios, possibly tempting them with a prize for most original scenario. Some of the responses I got indeed surprised us, including some downright gruesome ones, but it’s also interesting to discover how many of the responses you won’t be able to read at all, so maybe better to ask them to tell you what happened instead. Dancing to Halloween songs? Sure, probably for a little bit, but don’t expect the kids to line dance to “let’s do the time warp again.” And definitely forget showing the video of “Thriller” if the kiddos are real young ones. Your best bet for some peace and quiet? Put on “It’s a Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.” The 1966 classic still has a way of holding the kiddos’ attention and there’s no doubt that there’s a lot to love in old-school animation.
Still the best part of any Halloween party with young ones is seeing them in costume, and for a country that doesn’t celebrate Halloween at all really except for the international schools, there were plenty of costumes for sale in Egypt. We ended up acquiring some lovely gems over the years such as a giant banana costume that still looks freshly hand-stitched. Also, how cool is it that Kai could be Alexander the Great when we lived in Alexandria! In addition to costumes there’s also a surprising amount of fun Halloween-themed gifts and trinkets in the markets of Alexandria and Cairo (yes, I traveled a few hours by train to Cairo looking for party goods!) Ever since our first Halloween party in Alexandria, we’ve given the kids a little gift bag of fun things that could they could enjoy as a memory of the party because one of the things I didn’t like about trick-or-treating as a kid in the US was that almost everything you got from Halloween night was gone in a couple days. Of all the goodies we’ve given out over the years, I think my favorite was the boxing Jack-‘o-lantern pens you see Kai holding here; in subsequent years I found boxing witches and werewolves too.
Speaking of Jack-‘o-lanterns, we couldn’t find pumpkins in Egypt around Halloween time that we could carve except for imported ones that were too expensive, so we ended up carving big squash instead. Kai named the one you see above Gordon (Gordy for short), and Gordy always had a voracious appetite so here you can see Kai’s best friend Musa feeding him his tie. 😀 Beyond Halloween, we always had fun hosting Kai’s buddies (I believe we still called them “playdates” then?) and we’ll always remember that our place in Alex for being filled with big laughs and kid-sized barbaric yawps. We’ll also never forget seeing Kai grow up from a preschooler at Learning Tree Pre School to a Year 4 student at ELM International School. When they say that kids grow up right before your very eyes, they aren’t kidding. Below is a picture of Kai as Red Crayon from the book “The Day the Crayons Quit” in 2016 and then him as the father from the book “Every Friday” in 2018. Talk about growing up fast!
Thailand— Big city, cozy party fun
When we moved to the Land of Smiles, the shipment containing all of our stuff was still on its way from Egypt several months later, even as Halloween was approaching— yikes! We were starting to guess that our shipment traveled part of the way on the back of a camel! 😀 But fortunately for us, our friends Melissa and Sean were in the US on holiday and were traveling back to Thailand, and understanding our dilemma (yes, dilemma!) of not having access to our Halloween stuff, they agreed to bring back costumes of our choice from the US so that we could still celebrate, and they were awesome as well to invite us to participate in their apartment building’s trick-or-treating activities too. Given our love for food costumes over the years, we decided to go for a couple’s costume and made it simple— PB&J (peanut butter and jelly). And going back full circle to our first Halloween abroad, where Ako and I were waitresses and Kai was the special menu item, we came up with the idea of Kai joining us as a third popular toast spread. Kai like many other kids is a big lover of Nutella, so we knew right there and then we had it— Kaitella! 🙂
In our first Halloween together in Thailand, we learned quite a bit, and maybe the most interesting thing we learned is that watermelons make an excellent substitute for carving Jack-‘o-lanterns! In Thailand most pumpkins are short and green like they are in Japan so they don’t make good pumpkins for carving. The big orange pumpkins you can find here are imports and are all exorbitantly expensive, as in over $100 per pumpkin, no joke! So the watermelon easily wins! Because watermelons don’t naturally “sit” like pumpkins, you cut the bottom off to make a base and you just scoop out the insides and serve it or use to make watermelon smoothies or juice. However, if you have a group of kids and you’re planning to carve watermelons for each one as we’ve done at our last two parties, just note that you’ll probably have way too much watermelon on your hands and may end up freezing a lot of it (and potentially tossing a lot of it too!) Carved watermelons certainly don’t last as long as pumpkins but one tip is to keep it in the refrigerator until you want to display it at night; it will extend the life of your Jack-‘o-lantern for sure. Also, use only flameless votive candles when you want to light them, but the cool thing about using a watermelon, with its red color, is that it will look really cool regardless… check it out!
As Kai now tolerates more scary stuff than he used to, we’re also starting to kick up the Halloween decorations to the next level, though we’re still far from the haunted house look that I’d love to see (future party goals!) One rather funny new addition to our decorating involves using the large Gorilla storage box we received in Nepal from our friend (thanks Jenn!) that we continue to store most of our Halloween stuff in. Noting that the box itself looks like a casket, I empty the box of all the decorations and then use the storage box as a decoration itself, putting a surprise inside that’s revealed when Kai or one of his friends opens the “casket.” This year’s inhabitant was the pretty scary flying skeleton chap you see above, wearing a button announcing that he was fully vaccinated. Yep, gotta keep it timely! Thankfully the COVID-19 situation in Thailand was under control in 2020, allowing for a responsibly cozy but fun party as well as Kai’s first Halloween sleepover party. The prospects for our Halloween party this past month were looking pretty grim for awhile this summer and even into September, but thankfully the situation with the delta variant has improved enough that we were able to hold yet another Halloween party with Kai’s classmates and especially his best bud Luca before he moved from Thailand to Florida.
Well, dear reader, I just want to thank you for reading my reflections and hope these stories have given you some food for thought about the fun that can be had when we share our cultures and traditions, and when we improvise and make new ones. And speaking of food, as a reward for making it all the way to the end of my post, I just want to share some treats with you, prepared by Chef Ako. Ako has been an absolutely wonderful and essential partner in all the parties we’ve thrown over the years, and there’s no doubt I couldn’t pull off Halloween or any holiday for that matter without her. Her creative talents always blow me away, and her hard work, patience and support are so incredibly appreciated. As anyone who has thrown a party knows, it’s not easy to be the organizers, but I’m so grateful that we’re making these memories together, and I’m proud that our little trio has been able to help create fun memories for many others around the world as well. And along with being a dad and a teacher, being a cross-cultural ambassador—and especially an ambassador of Halloween—will always be a title I’ll cherish.
