Walls in France: Happy Halloween!

Halloween was definitely different for the Wall family this year! During our years in the green house in Mt. Pleasant, Halloween was a big deal for us…highly decorated house with fog machine, remote controlled rat, graves galore and of course the ghost in the tree that scared many and delighted others! For five years, I was my lovely witchy self, and we gave out margaritas to the parents of the trick-or-treaters while the kids got their usual dose of candy. Those were definitely good times at the Wall household. Assuming that there would not be much going on in our town of Eygalieres for Halloween, we planned a little party to celebrate the event this year. We invited Josepha Defaix to celebrate and to spend her fall vacation. Emmanuelle and Gilles brought her down from Lyon on Thursday and they spent a couple of nights with us, but had to head home before the Halloween festivities. The day before Halloween, however, Gilles carved the jack-o-lantern and Emmanuelle made a fabulous French meal from the pumpkin that was retrieved from the inside…cooked pumpkin, cream, cheese and butter – delicious!!

A couple of days before Halloween, we discovered that the town was indeed going to celebrate in their own fashion…The posters advertising the event said to meet at the Place Pago Tard (at the upper end of the village) at 5:30pm. At that point, the kids would then descend into the town and get candy from the merchants who were participating. Afterwards, a magic show was scheduled for the kids at the Salle des Fetes. So, we adjusted our party plans (with the consent of the invitees – Heidi, Jean Paul, their daughter Ann Catherine, and their four precious grandchildren) to participate in the village festivities and then come to our house for what we had planned. So, as usual, we spent Halloween day getting ready for Halloween night…we decorated the house with minimal decorations (spiders made from yogurt cups and string, little ghosts made from Kleenex and lots and lots of candy that Tutu had brought from the US.) Good ole Bucky of course pulled through with putting a ghost in the tree at the entrance to our yard. It was a simpler version of the ghosts we have had in the past, but was a huge hit with the kids! We prepared chairs for musical chairs and set up a big can with water in it an apple-bobbing contest. I got food ready for the party, including pizza, kettle corn and carrots and Bucky made his tradition Halloween margaritas!!

We dressed in our costumes…Lucy (who is now spelling her name Lucie as the French do) was a “modern” (read - cute) witch, Kathleen was a French artist and Josepha was a proper gentleman. I broke with tradition yet again and was not a witch (although Bucky may beg to differ!) and was a hippie instead. Bucky opted for the scary, hairy-man costume which was super easy and very effective! Heidi and her family arrived and we headed to the village to meet at the appropriate place. As Kathleen noted, most of the kids were dressed in scary garb (lots of lots of witches and goblins), and I told her that they probably all think that you have to dress scary for Halloween – I must admit I did miss the princesses, Hanna Montanas and Michael Jacksons that I assume roamed the streets of Mt. Pleasant and other US neighborhoods! At any rate, the entire population descended en masse upon the merchants who were distributing candy. Lucie and Kathleen both said that the system was a bit bizarre, but definitely enjoyed getting the candy!! Since three of Heidi’s grandchildren were younger (3, 4, and 6), we decided to skip the magic show, and head straight to our house for our party. The kids, parents and grandparents had lots of fun. Another family who we had invited (with an American father, French mother and two teenage boys) also stopped by. Everyone (grown-ups that is) enjoyed the margaritas. The kids loved bobbing for apples and lots of candy was consumed. We missed our friends in Mt. Pleasant, but we did enjoy our Halloween in France! Hope everyone else had a happy Halloween too!