Living abroad, it’s always a little precarious when holidays roll around. Do you celebrate American style? Or temper the celebration because you are away from home? Our first year in Switzerland, holidays took us by surprise. In learning to care for a new baby, we forgot to care about calendars and our favorite festive days snuck up on us without notice.
Halloween, for example, caught us completely off-guard. By the time I realized that Halloween was fast approaching, there was no time to order Addi a costume from the U.S.—and they didn’t sell them here in her size. The costumes that they sell here are the cheap grocery store kind. You know, the ones with the plastic suit and flat mask? I always felt bad for those kids … and I’m sure that their candy yield was adversely affected too.
I lamented that I didn’t have a Halloween costume for my first daughter’s first Halloween … worrying that I was already ruining her childhood. My mom heard the sentimentality cry and sent us a pumpkin costume, which arrived mid-November. So, our Halloween was celebrated in November. I backdated the photos and Addi will never know.
Americans always ask if kids here celebrate Halloween. They do, but with way less gusto than in the U.S. When we were kids, we used to run from house to house for two hours straight to get the goods. It was the one time that you could eat as much candy as you could hold, and I was not to be outdone. It was un-calorie-counting bliss. Kids here seem to be satisfied with less, or they’re just plain lazy. They knock on a few doors half-heartedly and then call it a night. I could teach them a trick or two!
Thanksgiving—my personal favorite holiday— presents another set of issues. A turkey is not as easy to come by as a bag of suitable candy, and it takes several intense ingredient-finding missions to gather the ingredients for all the trimmings.
Last year, there was no Thanksgiving. We just didn’t have the energy to put together a feast. I look forward to Thanksgiving dinner all year, so it was a sad, sad day for me. You can imagine my excitement then this year when my friend Tracy invited us to share Turkey Day with her family. I was like Pavlov’s dog … salivating at the suggestion of turkey.
