Oct 31

Oct 31 Halloween 2020

I think we can all agree that we don’t know how we have made it to October already, but it is here and it is one of my favourite days of the year. Most children are excited about halloween because of the candy, but from a young age that wasn’t what drew me to the event.

As most children with allergies, parties were hard to manage. My mother chose to reclaim this holiday and we held THE halloween party for all of our friends. I am Irish on my mother’s side, and the Irish people take allerges very seriously. In Ireland, it is different to the kind of Halloween’s you might be used to. Whilst we have adopted the cotumes and dressing up, we still stick to some old traditions. The parties were immersed with some of them and I was able to enjoy Halloween aside from the candy

Here are some of my favorites.

Colcannon
Which is creamy mashed potato with green cabbage and onions.
Apple brack
Irish apple cake with a twist. You put some materials in some tin foil and place in the cake before cooking. When someone got the pieces they found their “future”
ITEMS
- Rag – No financial future
- Coin – A prosperous financial year
- Ring – Romance/happiness
- Thimble – No marriage/Romance
Apple bobbing
Apples in a bowl filled with water, and children put there face in the bowl and try to bite the apple stem (Not Covid-19 safe)
Future blindfolded taste test - sugar, salt, water, and vingar
- Sugar = you are sweet
- Salt = you will be wealthy
- Water = you will travel
- Vinegar = you will be sour

My whole life I never felt like I missed out on events, because we always made them not about food. We celebrated the company and what we could do not what we couldn't. As I got older and more into theatre I loved the dressing up part. There was no more withes or cats, I went all out.

One of my favourite Halloweens was in NYC (before I moved there) and we went to see an amazing off broadway show. We went into a Pharmacy (Duane Reade) and I saw a woman dressed as a substitute teacher with stickers, gum stuck to her clothes and pencils, paper planes in her hair. I realised that costumes could be so much fun! The costume bug bit me, and that is when I became obsessed with dressing up.

Don’t get me wrong, I like candy, chocolate, and sweets as much as the next person BUT I just didn’t care enough. I was able to eat that all year round, Halloween candy was about being social, not about eating it. That is how it still is in my home. Even with the kids I Nanny, I put so much emphasis on dressing up, craving of the pumpkins, Halloween movies and music. In the recent years, I have tried to implement the Teal Pumpkin Project so they don’t rely so much on the “candy” aspect - they don’t have allergies but awareness and advocating starts in the home. We plan 2 years in advance for our outfits and it is a tradition now.

Happy Halloween, I hope that you enjoy it, even without some traditions we may be used to. We are doing a Candy Hunt, carving pumpkins, dressing up and watching Hocus Pocus! Let me know what you did!

If you want to learn about the Teal Pumpkin Project for next year, when hopefully life will be a bit more normal, you can read my blog on it HERE