“Can’t we just call it something else?”: The Halloween that almost wasn’t

 “The foulest stench is in the air
The funk of forty thousand years
And grizzly ghouls from every tomb
Are closing in to seal your doom

And though you fight to stay alive
Your body starts to shiver
For no mere mortal can resist
The evil of the thriller”

Over twenty years ago, these very lyrics sent me crouching for cover under the dining room table.  As a child I hated Michael Jackson’s song “Thriller” because my father, the jokester, thought it was hilarious that I was afraid and liked to scare me half to death by playing it repeatedly.  Now, for me it is not Halloween unless it is played and ironically Halloween has become one of my favorite holidays.  I love having parties and dressing up, so of course any holiday that combines the two is awesome. 

            When I started to pack for Costa Rica in January, I went through all my dvds and cds that could be used for teaching materials and stumbled across a Monster Mash Halloween cd.   Having studied about Latin America; I knew that Halloween wasn’t very popular and even considered sacrilegious in some places; so I decided not to pack it.  Instead I opted for more practical items such as stilettos and a clothing steamer.

            Although the idea of celebrating in some way crept into my head when I began planning units, a conversation with my host mom early in the year about a past volunteer who attempted and was received badly by the Director and the community, convinced me not to. Why would I ever want to give up my celebrity status? “Teacher, hello” “Look it’s the teacher.” I’ve perfected my wave and everything.

            One day, my Director gave me a ride into Turrialba and we started talking about the Culture day, which was also in October.  The students were to dress up in costumes to represent people from other countries.  I had resigned this to be my Halloween, it was better than nothing and it was in the month of October.  I told her I know that they don’t celebrate Halloween, but this activity reminded me a lot of the holiday.  She said, which completely shocked me; “Why don’t you do an activity for Halloween. I think it would be good to expose the children to American culture.  Explain what it is to the parents and see if they’ll let their children participate.”  It was announced at the Cultural day that the Teacher was going to have an event on Halloween and more information would follow.  I braced myself for the influx of angry parents.  Not long after one parent ran up to me and said: “Do they get to wear costumes? I saw lots of cute costumes at the Ropa Americana.”  Everyone else merely went home.

            Although the religion teacher had announced the event she really wasn’t a supporter nor was the Kinder teacher.  They both asked; “Can’t we just call it something else?” For many people Halloween means people robbing graves, sacrificing animals and people, casting spells and devil worshipping.  Isn’t that always the way. Along comes a group of devil worshippers and ruins it for everyone.  I fought for the name.  What else would we call it? Although I assured them that I do not believe in any of that stuff and that no one I know does; the parent letter still said that students would come to school and celebrate the day of Halloween without saying they would celebrate Halloween itself.

“It's close to midnight and something evil's lurking in the dark
Under the moonlight, you see a sight that almost stops your heart
You try to scream but terror takes the sound before you make it
You start to freeze as horror looks you right between the eyes
You're paralyzed”

Michael Jackson sang these lyrics; he sang of a true thriller night, complete with Zombies and Werewolves.  In San Ramon, the only things that would be lurking in the dark were the toads and the frogs.  You may’ve heard a howl, but most likely it was a dog, the wolves, luckily for us, live on the other side of the mountain.  You see everything we know to be Halloween was prohibited to not offend the parents.  Not cats, no witches, no ghosts and no monsters.

Determined to have Halloween live I decided pumpkins would be our theme.  So we carved our $14 rotting pumpkin, glued construction paper pumpkins to treat bags and decorated blank pumpkin templates on the days leading up to the big day.  Most of the assignments ended up being homework because as I expected; many of the parents wouldn’t allow their children to participate.  As the days went on more and more students began to change their views from no’s to yeses.  I later learned that the majority of the students who initially said no only said so because they couldn’t afford to buy a Halloween costume.

On October31^st, Halloween visited San Ramon School and it was more than Cleopatra could have ever hoped for.  There were princesses, animals, fairies, superheroes, dolls and even a niña (my host sister mastered the Director’s look.)  Even the other teachers came in costume. The school had a Bingo in the morning to raise funds for another activity and then it was time for Halloween.  I started by telling the students a little about Halloween in the United States.  I made sure to tell them that they don’t have to buy Halloween costumes, they could create a costume from materials they already had in their houses.  I learned this at a young age, when my mom decided that I was too old to trick or treat and stopped buying costumes, so I created my own.  My very first was a rapper.  I threw on some baggy clothes a bandana, walked around with a mic and said yo yo yo!  

                                                                                                     

After teaching them the official way to ask for candy we started our games.  The first was a scavenger hunt.  The students were divided into three teams and were sent off to find the things on their slips of papers: 5 pumpkins (happy, sad or mad), 5 apples (red, yellow or green), 6 spiders (3 green and 3 orange) and 6 rings (spider, pumpkin or bat).  When I gave the okay I nearly got trampled.  I thought recess was bad, but this was definitely scarier.  After we declared the blue team the winner the rings and spiders were divided up within each group.   Next was "Pin the nose on the pumpkin".  I made a giant jack-o-lantern and used white-out for where the nose should go.  About four students got the nose exactly perfect.  I was later informed that they told the others to just feel for where the white out was and put the nose there.  Those little cheaters!  Finally, there was the balloon popping game.  We kept the students in teams and made students race to a chair and sit on a balloon to pop it.  Then they had to read the paper inside that said dance, act or sing.  I loved hearing them butcher “Days of the Week” and act like farm animals.  But watching them bouncing up and down on the balloons unable to pop them was by far the highlight of the game.  The event concluded with trick-or-treating to the teachers.  For some reason, all thirty something students decided to mob the teacher first.  When the parents came to pick up their children, the director made an announcement saying that she would never do anything to go against their beliefs and our version of Halloween did not. That I come from another culture and they have to respect other cultures.  She wanted the children to experience a part of my culture.  I couldn’t have smiled harder.

There may not have been ghosts, vampires or witches at our little Halloween at our Escuela de San Ramon, but it didn’t matter.  The trick or treaters and teachers had a blast and I developed an even greater love for my school and community.  Of course, in keeping with tradition; I went home and played “Thriller.”

Ahahahaha   ahahahaha ahahahaha!!!