In which we celebrate Halloween

Several weeks ago, Blaise's mom emailed me to ask whether or not they celebrated Halloween in France, and I was forced to admit that I really didn't know. I knew that Toussaint (All Saints' Day) was an important holiday (the kids get a week and a half off school), but I had no idea about Halloween. So, of course, I got on the internet and poked around a bit. As best I could figure, there was some Halloweeny kind of stuff, but it wasn't really a very important day. I did, however, find that the American Library in Paris was having a Halloween party for kids, and since Halloween was a Saturday, it was actually on Halloween. So, last weekend when we went to the library, I signed the kids up.

Then, we planned to buy things to make costumes on Monday. But Cherry was sick, as was Blaise, so that didn't work out. Neither did Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday. By Friday things were beginning to seem a bit desperate, so off to the Auchan we went. Since Halloween isn't a very big thing here, there aren't rows and rows of costumes like there are at, say, Target. Instead there were a few witches hats, a bit of face paint, a pumpkin costume, and some Asterix and Obelix masks.

Sapphire wanted to be a witch. Since she already had black pants, we found her a black sweater, and, fortunately, a witch's hat. We debated buying face paint, but she really wanted green, the one color that they didn't seem to have.

Ezio wanted to be Asterix. We had originally planned to make some cardboard wings and attach them to his winter hat, but were lucky enough to find an Asterix mask in the bin of Halloween stuff. Then, we needed to find a black shirt, which was surprisingly difficult, and red pants, which was unsurprisingly difficult. He eventually ended up with a black girl's turtleneck and a pair of Asterix pajamas that had red pants.

Cherry wanted to be a pumpkin. Since there was no appropriate pumpkin costume at the Auchan (the one there was for 10 to 14 year olds, which seems like a kind of lame costume for a tween), we needed to make one. So we needed something orange (a bath towel) and something for a face (a yellow washcloth). There was, fortunately, a sewing kit in the apartment. And so Friday night my mother made Cherry a pumpkin costume out of a towel and cut up bits of washcloth.

Saturday after lunch, we set out. We stopped along the bridge to snap a picture in front of the Eiffel Tower, then headed the rest of the way to the library. Sapphire insisted that I carry her hat the whole way because she was worried that she might look odd with it on.

Once we were at the library, the kids got to decorate pumpkin and ghost cutouts, which the library staff then hung all over the library's reading room. Then they sang some songs and listened to some stories. They went for a parade through the library and had a costume contest (which none of my kids won). Finally, they watched the Great Pumpkin movie.

On the way home, Cherry melted down, oh, say, 50 times, and so the 45 minute trip ended up being a 90 minute slog. Then we had trick or treaters knock on our door, but no candy because we didn't know there would be trick or treaters. Oops. Perhaps we could have offered them red beans and rice.