Halloween 2011 - Part 1

My kids are young, Zakeem 11, Farheen 6, and they eagerly wait for Halloween night. As you know (or don't) this is a traditional event that is celebrated on the last day of October (31st) after dusk. Kids (and some adults) puts on their scary (or fancy - Farheen would not put anything that can not be passed on as a princess's outfit beating the whole idea of Halloween night, but tell that to her) outfits and goes door to door threatening the homeowners to treat them or get tricked (hence the phrase 'trick or treat'). Most homwowners in our neighborhood have little kids and they are more than happy to treat.
Before moving ahead, lets give a quick history of this activity. Here's what I got from the website http://www.halloweenhistory.org/. There may be some different versions around but this collaborates of several others that I went through.

History of Halloween
Halloween is a holiday celebrated on the night of October 31. Traditional activities include trick-or-treating, bonfires, costume parties, visiting "haunted houses" and carving jack-o-lanterns. Irish and Scottish immigrants carried versions of the tradition to North America in the nineteenth century. Other western countries embraced the holiday in the late twentieth century including Ireland, the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico and the United Kingdom as well as of Australia and New Zealand.
Halloween has its origins in the ancient Celtic festival known as Samhain (pronounced "sah-win").

The festival of Samhain is a celebration of the end of the harvest season in Gaelic culture. Samhain was a time used by the ancient pagans to take stock of supplies and prepare for winter. The ancient Gaels believed that on October 31, the boundaries between the worlds of the living and the dead overlapped and the deceased would come back to life and cause havoc such as sickness or damaged crops.
The festival would frequently involve bonfires. It is believed that the fires attracted insects to the area which attracted bats to the area. These are additional attributes of the history of Halloween.
Masks and consumes were worn in an attempt to mimic the evil spirits or appease them.
Trick-or-treating, is an activity for children on or around Halloween in which they proceed from house to house in costumes, asking for treats such as confectionery with the question, "Trick or treat?" The "trick" part of "trick or treat" is a threat to play a trick on the homeowner or his property if no treat is given. Trick-or-treating is one of the main traditions of Halloween. It has become socially expected that if one lives in a neighborhood with children one should purchase treats in preparation for trick-or-treaters.

Now, that I have cleared that part let's progress with the  night. Over the last few years I have noticed more and more enthusiasm about this event. It is also possible that the neighborhood we lived in are becming more kid friendly. We have mixed environment where brown (South East Asia), black (Gyana, Africa, Jamaica etc.) and whites (local and East European) lived side by side with almost equal numbers. This is not a posh neighborhood with million dolalr homes but most seemed well off, streets peaceful. The kids were very aware of the competition. Often homeowners would underestimate the trick-n-treater's numbers and purchase insufficient treats eventually running out in the middle of a streaming treaters (the embarrassment is obvious, the danger is a possibility just in case any of these visitors tried to run a trick). My kids were more worried about losing out on treats just in case other kids beat them into making the rounds (and causing the run-out condition).
One of our friend's three kids joined us as well. This is one event that truly requires a group effect.

It was a Monday. I had to go to work (damn!). I didn;t make it back until 6:30 PM. The night was falling, air was cooling, isolated trick and treaters had just started to step out of their homes. I had already received numerous calls from my home front rushign me to get home as I had committed to be bodyguard of these bunch during there treat hunt. Most neighborhoods here are safe, most people regular family folks but yet bad thigns happened, monsters among regular people are not unusual. Every parents wants to be on the safe side and no kids under the age of 13-14 are allowed to roam around without a proper guardian. I loved the event as I felt that going around the neighborhood provided all of us an opportunity to in the least get familiar with the people who lived here. Often we would meet parents of our kids friends who either went to the same school or played in the same playground. Under normal circumstances society here, especially in the suburbs, a little isolated unlike palces where population is more dense (say Dhaka).

The night before we had purchased and carved two pumpkins keeping with the tradition in scary features (evil eyes, long fangs etc.). Before starting our run I carried those two out, placed it on the patio stairs and set two lighted candles inside them for added effect against the backdrop of darkness around.

That's it for part 1. Part 2 coming soon.



 

Fall trip 2011 - part 2

The Super 8 motel in Peterborough was quite a bit of improvement over the usual look and feel of the chain. It was a four storied building, recently renovated, shiny and clean (or the other way around). The rooms were specious for something less than $100 per night and were clean - something very important for the missus. The kids were very excited and immediately switched on the TV and got into their usual brawling about who would watch which channel. Eventually they settled for a young adult channel – something none of them should be watching. But considering every kids program now were about boyfriends and girlfriends we stopped being picky any more. The networks were more interested in cashing in by tickling the hormones of the growing kids early than to presenting them with decent shows, something that didn’t go overboard on many unwanted fronts. [I guess we could ground them from watching any TV shows until they grew up. But we are not nuts! If they aren’t watching TV who is watching them? TV works as pacifier, let’s not disregard that fact.]

Within hours all our friends had arrived except one who planned to join us the next morning. Things turned a little noisy at this point. We had arranged with the motel to place us in one continuous area so that we could keep the noise level contained in one part. In reality, we got rooms spread out in one floor. This gave the kids an opportunity to race up and down the corridor visiting each others rooms. Fortunately there were only a few other guests beside us in that floor but we still had to reign in – before the motel authority did. But it’s quite difficult to manage a dozen kids in a vacation mode – regardless of their age. Ours are young and restless.



We had dinner outside and later went to watch movies. During our summer outing in the Thousand Islands this year we went for the same routine and watched the Transformer Movie – Dark of The Moon. We paid a lot of money, sat occupying couple of adjacent rows and then slept most part through the metallic battle bonanzas. Unfortunate but true – these robotic monsters with their flashy movement and changing shape and forms quickly becomes boring especially if you are caught slightly tired, which most of us were driving a few hours on our way from GTA.

In Peterborough we went for different movies based on interest. I grouped up with the young boys for the showing of Real Steel and God O’ God did I like it! I enjoyed every moment of this movie, and was much more enthusiastic about it than the kids. It had the right dose of emotions, actions and heroisms. If you are reading this and haven’t watched this movie, take my word and watch it (All risk is yours, I am just providing my opinion – there goes the fine print).

I am not going to describe every moment of the trip here. Let’s cut the blabbering and get to the couple of attractions that we visited there. Customarily, before visiting any place I took the time to browse through the net to find out the local area attractions and activities keeping in my mind the combined interest of the group that had an effective age range of 5 years to 50 years. Unless you are in my shoes you would never know how daunting a task it is. Some stuff kids just embraces while the adults outright not interested in, while there are others the adults can’t contain their excitement about when the kids turn lethargic.

1. Warsaw Caves: A nice place to visit, about forty kilometers North West of Peterborough. The caves were not really anything grandiose but were interesting enough to get the gang of boys going. These are really crevices along the surface of rocky areas inside considerably dense woods. Some of the caves were too narrow for even our skinny bunch to explore; some others were just big enough. Most were short, confined caves but some went across several chambers underground and presented the boys an opportunity to get a taste of underworld adventure. I had carried a flashlight knowing it may come handy in the caves. The boys snatched it away from me and used it into the sub terrain passages. I am usually a willing partner in crime when it came to similar activities but looking at the narrowness of the cave mouths and exits I dared not to wondering how odd it would look when the fire brigade came to rescue me with my butt stuck inside a narrow crevice. I could even see my butt first images in the newspaper – local and national.

There was also a kettle near by, a small water body inside a kettle like natural rocky enclave and being nourished by a stream that emerged from underground and flew through the kettle deeper into the woods. The kettle provided us some good entertainment as everybody tried to cross it hopping on small chunk of rocks scattered across the water body. The depth of water at any point couldn’t have been more than two three feet, hence the risk of drowning wasn’t there but a fall would mean getting soaked and couldn’t be a comfortable feeling as the temperature hovered below 15 degree Fahrenheit. However, things do happen. One of my friends 9 year old son was trying a stint to cross it balancing on a fallen tree that connected the two sides of the kettle and like all movies that are trying to tickle people into laughter at the cost of others misery – he fell, chest first, with a big splash; it was something heartless to do, especially knowing the water was cold, but most of us broke into laughter while the poor kid sobbed in sheer embarrassment and possibly of cold. After this we had to cut short our adventure into the caves and quickly returned to the parking lot where we helped him change his cloths. Nobody needed a sick kid in an outing.



The next attraction that we visited there was….. that’s in part 3.