¡Jalouín!

I have just understood in a wholly new way the old saying "absence makes the heart grow fonder." Or maybe "Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got 'til its gone."

I am talking about Halloween.

I am experiencing tonight, along with my family, my first Halloween outside of the US, and the sound emitted by the vast, sucking hole where this greatest of all secular, truly American holidays would normally be, is deafening. If that sounds like overstatement, come to Europe for the month of October someday and see for yourself. Take, for example, my walk home from school yesterday.

For those who don't already know, Andee and I work at School Year Abroad in Zaragoza, a mini American enclave surrounded by a VERY Spanish city of 750,000. All of our 67 students (save one Brazilian) are American, and five of the twelve adults working in the school are also "yanquis." So you can imagine that in "el colegio americano" Halloween is not lightly observed. On Friday, October 30, the school was decorated with pumpkins, bats, and spiderwebs. Most of the students arrived for classes dressed like elementary school kids all over the US on the same day, as did Griffin and I (pirate and vampire, respectively). There was candy and good cheer everywhere, and lots of photos taken (some to be posted on Facebook).

And then came my walk home.

Walking up the Paseo de la Independencia, at the core of the city's shopping district, I have to admit that I looked a little silly. OK, a LOT silly. Not because I was a vampire strolling past ZARA, El Corte Inglés, and countless top end boutiques, but rather because I was a vampire strolling along with a computer bag over his shoulder. But that is not the weird part. The weird part is that absolutely no one reacted to me. People were looking, I could see them stare. But I got not a single smile, not a single giggle, not even a disapproving shake of the head. NOTHING. Also, none of the stores were decorated. Very small pumpkins were available for 3 euros ($4.50) in El Corte Inglés (complete with Jack-O-Lantern faces conveniently pre-attached with black duct tape) but no stores had any displayed. And that is just a beginning. Here are some notable facts about "Jalouín" in Spain:

• There are no candy corns. That alone should have warned me about today.
• There is no trick-or-treating. Chaia is, with good reason, outraged.
• There are no parades. This, in a city that 2 weeks ago had a parade of around 300,000 people. In costumes.
• Chaia was not allowed to wear a full costume to school on Friday, only a hat. Outraged.
• If you look hard, you can find costumes for sale, as well as bags of candy. But again, no one wears costumes and no trick or treating.

I think what I am witnessing is a holiday being born. If you look around, the pieces are there. Its just that no one knows what to do with them. It reminds me a bit of the scene in Apollo 13, when the engineers dump all of the hardware pieces on a table and have to figure out how to make them work together. We are doing our very American best to explain things. Tonight we are having a Haloween party (just the 4 of us) where we will eat candy and play "pin the hat on the witch" (Chaia's invention). On Thursday we carved pumpkins (only 3 this year, they are a bit pricey), including one with Ben and Chaia's name carved into it. If anyone reading this sees Brooke Libby, please let her know that 10 years ago she gave us a pumpkin with Ben's name carved into it. We have done this every year since, adding Chaia's name in 2002.

Maybe what Halloween in Spain needs is a bit of hybridization, something along the lines of what the church did with the combination of the original Pagan holiday with Catholic veneration of saints (Nov 1 is All Saints Day in Spain) that gave rise to Halloween. Andee and I have suggested that we could start a tradition whereby adults dress in costumes, knock on doors throughout the neighborhood, and trick-or-treat for wine and tapas.

I think it could take off.