Local Halloween

When does halloween fall? Really I dont know if it were on the 31st or 30th or before that. And it isnt much of a concern to me since it is not part of either our local culture or my chinese tradition. But a lot of urban people are still trying to introduce the idea of a halloween custom in this side of the globe with all those trick/treating in costumes and pumpkins that we cannot even grow in our own backyards. perhaps it can work out well as a marketing statement giving us a reason to put up a halloween sale or a halloween party on the weekend closest to the end of october, giving drunkards more reason than oktoberfest to go out and get drunk, and more reason for other people under the influence of an american invasion to go out and dress in silly costumes and for the rest of the people to laugh at.

I was at a mall lining up in a fastfood today for an afternoon meal when I saw some kids in costumes with their parents going around. I heard a mother whisper to her son to go over the fastfood counter and ask for candies. The boy managed to go over to the manager mindless of the crowd he just made and got some candies and returned to his mother bewildered of this whole routine he will be doing.

We do have a local holiday that seem too similar to halloween in some angle. Every Nov 1 we flock to the cemeteries and cherish our dead (sort of the day of our dead). But it doesnt come with costumes and pumkins but with candles and flowers, and for some suckers who must have gotten the eerie feeling of staying too long in the graveyard, fairytales of ghosts and undead who come to join the celebration. Such ideas must have linked our holiday with Halloween because of the concept of ghosts being around at this time of year, or perhaps a reason long used to introduce halloween into our culture.