This Halloween post was posted originally on October 26 2006.
It was my dear husband who reminded me to dress up the little girls into witches for Halloween. “Halloween?” I thought Halloween was only done in the Western countries. ” Yes you have to dress them up as witches”. As a little boy in the late sixties, he pranced around the neighborhood begging for candies and yelling “Trick or Treat” . According to him, the Halloween “Trick or Treat” originated in the Philippines in the sixties when the Americans living in the village started the tradition. In the early nineties, Halloween was not yet commercialized. The Trick or Treat was limited to Ayala Land villages, where most American expatriates lived. There were a few masks and simple decors in National Book store but that was it. No costumes. I had to be creative. I designed a witch costume with yellow piping and a dressmaker executed it. A balikbayan sister from San Francisco brought in the hat, the candy corn candies, the fangs gum for props.
We drove all the way to visit the kid’s grandparents in Alabang just for the spooky Halloween experience. As usual, the beaming stage mother dressed up her adorable girls as cute little witches. The Trick or Treat party at the club was fantastic. The kids were dressed in typical Halloween costumes like vampires, ghosts, witches, and devils or even pumpkins.The eerie decors added to the thrilling experience.
The Trick or Treat adventure in this swanky Alabang village is something else. The houses compete with each other on the scariest theme. Most of these houses had tricks. In one house, the kids were terrified of the candle-lit pathway that led to a vampire rocking on the chair. Complete with spine-tingling music as you walk towards the vampire, it even freaked me out. Four year old M scurried as soon as she saw the ghoulish figure. For many years, the girls spent their Halloween with their grandparents in this Alabang village until Luijoe arrived in our lives.
