Halloween is here!

Well dear reader, we lived through it. In addition to earthquakes, wildfires and even rain, we've now survived through our first Halloween here in the US.

As I mentioned in a previous episode, the preparations have been going on for weeks (and that's actually pretty good; you don't see a lot of Christmas decorations in the shops here yet as a result). However, this week was the big day... and little did we suspect what it would be like.

Now, in my humble opinion, Halloween just doesn't work in the UK. The weather is usually pretty miserable, and if you're (un)lucky a small group of miserable-looking kids in bedsheets will turn up at your doorstep and look more bedraggled than scary. It's just not fun.

Here in the US, Halloween is just... daft. It's silly and funny and pretty much anything goes. Houses are decorated with pumpkins, spider's webs and maybe the odd ghost. What we didn't expect was the dressing up: at Google I had close colleagues showing up as a quite convincing Harry Potter, a rather fetching Jedi Elvis, and best of all, a genuine Google Engineering VP dressed as The Cat in the Hat, including mittens in which it was not possible to type. As I said to that person: this isn't just a costume, it's a nickname that's going to stick.

The baristas got in on the act too:

While at home, Sean and Ermintrude got into the spirit:

Kids started arriving at the house at about 6:30pm, and there was a fairly steady stream until 8:30pm-ish. The neighbourhood was busy: people play music and make their houses fairly welcoming, and it seems to be expected that kids will travel to the better off areas to get nicer treats. We had an array of fancy dress costumes arriving at the house, very few of which had the scary theme: kids dressed as a pineapple (Helen's favourite), a duck, a penguin, a unicorn accompanied by a dog dressed as a rainbow, Superman, Batman, Captain America, a police officer (my favourite), a couple of stormtroopers, a witch, a couple of Elsas from Frozen, one of the mums sporting Day of the Dead face paint, and who knows what else.

There is huge participation in this: it took me ages to get home, because the traffic was much worse than usual as people rushed to get home to go out with their kids. Even for an old curmudgeon like me, there was something really quite enjoyable about the whole thing, and we're missing out on through the strange facsimile we've created in the UK. Next up, Thanksgiving!