Getting into the Halloween Season!

As much as I love the Holiday Seasons, I've had a hard time getting into Halloween here in England. It's not that they don't do Halloween, although I'm not sure exactly how they celebrate it, but it's just not quite the same. At the local Tesco (grocery store), they have a small section of Halloween decor. There are a few cheaply made, yet expensive, Halloween costumes, some decorations, and a few treats. You can't get candy corns, orange & brown M&Ms, or orange and white pumpkin taffy.

A little while back Cheryl wrote about a Halloween doorbell ditching thing that they did to get into the Halloween spirit. I thought it sounded like a good way for me to get into Halloween and start something new with our neighbors. So we printed up a poem, decorating it with some stickers, printed out a picture of a ghost with the word "BOO!" on it, and got two Halloween buckets full of treats.

Basically what you do, if you don't know already, is leave the poem, picture, and bucket of treats on the doorstep of two different neighbors. The poem is titled, "You've Been Boo'd". The poem talks about how they've been boo'd by a ghost, and to show how friendly our neighborhood is they have to do the same thing to two more neighbors. They put the picture of the ghost in their window so that people know they've already been "boo'd".

It's pretty fun, at least we enjoyed doing it. But, we are in England, and you never know how things like this are going to go over with people from a different culture. We decided to give one of the buckets to our next door neighbors, Nigel & Mae. They are a little bit older couple with no kids at home. We didn't know if they'd be very into it, but we've really enjoyed talking to them, and they've always been really friendly to us. The other bucket went to a family across the street that has two children about 10 and 13 years old. We thought they might be more receptive to it. So, for Family Home Evening we did this activity. Clark had to do all of the doorbell ditching. I am too pregnant to run, and the boys would have given it away. Clark was pretty nervous, but he pulled it off great. Both houses received their goodies. The following is a not-so-great picture of Clark delivering the bucket next door.

Next we just had to wait. As I said we did this on Monday evening. I think it was on Wednesday, or maybe Thursday that we noticed that Nigel and Mae had put up the Boo sign in their window. This made us happy. The next day after that, we noticed that another of our neighbors had the sign in their window. The family we gave it to has yet to put up their sign, but we did notice today that the house next to that family had a Halloween bucket of treats on their doorstep with the papers in the bucket. So it may be a little slow, and it seems some people are reluctant to do it, but so far, at least four other families have been effected by it. This has made Clark and I extremely happy. It's really helped in getting into the Holiday spirit.