Dulce o Truco

We knew that celebrating Halloween in Chile would be different.  We knew it could even be difficult since it is largely a North American holiday.  October 31 does happen to be a holiday here in Chile, just not Halloween.  It is Reformation Day and then November 1 is All Saints Day - so we get a four day weekend each year but that just means that half of the country is on vacation at the beach, while we are trying to beg candy off of them.  Halloween and trick or treating has caught on a bit in the past couple of years, but it just isn't there quite yet.  There is no parade of costumes at MadHatter's school, finding  pumpkins to carve can be difficult, and let's not get started on the candy that they call candy.  Most of it is small hard candies or sugary gummies, though I did manage to find some spider shaped chews.  There is very little chocolate to be found, so forget about getting a Kit Kat or Milk Duds.  There will be no Smarties, no Almond Joys and there will certainly not be anything resembling a Snickers bar.  Unless you have friends that had recently been in the U.S. and brought home bags of each (Thank you, Thank you, Thank you Missy!!!) 

And trick or treating can be challenging. The saying, in and of itself, is backwards - Dulce o Truco is Treat or Trick, not Trick or Treat. You can say Truco o Trato, which is the literal translation of Trick or Treat, but it just isn't as common here in Chile.  Then again, nothing about this holiday is common in Chile so I guess you can pretty much make it up as you go along.  We did.

On Friday we went to Papa's office to trick or treat.  Such fun and a great way to amass a  lot of candy in a short space of time.  The girls had a blast.  I think the office workers did too...

 

Sunday brought us a bona fide Halloween party with all the trimmings - choripan, salchichas, creme caramel...Oh, wait, those things are very Chilean.  OK, that may be very nontraditional but we did have a great candy hunt...That's Easter, you say...I'll give you that but at least it was candy.  Some of it even American (have I said Thank You Missy???).  So it wasn't very traditional, but maybe it can become a tradition while we are here.  The annual asado with candy hunt following.  I like it!

Before...

After

Finally, it was time to trick or treat...and I think we were all worn out from the celebrations of the past couple of days.  But, we put on our costumes again and headed out for our first South American Halloween adventure.  And it is a bit of an adventure.  As you will see from the pictures, it is a bit different here.  You first have to ring the security bell.  Then, the home owner will look at their video screen (or out the window) and see who is there.  If perhaps they like the looks of your costume (or if they aren't at the beach on vacation - it is late spring and the beach is a pretty lovely get away right now), they will come out the door and hand you some candy THROUGH THE GATE.  There is no admiring of costumes.  There is no dipping your hand in the bowl and taking one.  You get what you get and then they head back inside, quickly.  And that is only if they are handing out candy - which is about 20% of the time.  Yes, it is different.  It does take some getting used to.  But I was in no way bad.  My kids still had a great time with their friends.  I had a great time with mine.  And we both have more candy than we can eat before Thanksgiving...Wait, Thanksgiving...they don't do that here.  We all have more candy than we can eat before the Immaculate Conception (our next big holiday here).