A few pictures of Halloween at the Plaza de Armas in Cusco, Peru:

Now I have to admit, I used to not like Halloween, thought it was a good day to lock the doors, turn the lights off and let the dogs out. But that was long ago, now Halloween is one of my favorite holidays.

I don’t think Halloween is as big an event in Peru as in the US. In regular neighborhoods, you don’t see many kids dressed up, and in typical Peruvian fashion (better later than earlier) most kids are buying masks in the afternoon on Oct 31 – not like in the States where Wal-Mart is full of Halloween costumes for the entire month of October.

We went to the Plaza de Armas last night to check out the crowd and hand out candy. Peruvian kids don’t really go “trick-or-treating” like in the US, they just sort of walk up to you with a little plastic pumpkin and say “Halloween”. Patricia had warned me that we’d be mobbed as soon as kids noticed we had candy, and sure enough, we practically got run over by happy little ones, and sometimes their moms as well. One kid tried to come back a few times, and when Patricia noticed he said “that wasn’t me, that was my twin”. One day I’ll do a post on little white lies in Peru, they’re out of control at times and usually so obvious it’s plain funny.

Anyway, got of on a tangent… For those of you who get into folk legends, some Belgian scholars believe the origin of Halloween has to do with a Dutch folk song, Lied van Heer Halewijn

“Heer Halewyn zong een liedekyn,
Al wie dat hoorde wou by hem zyn.

…”

Find the complete lyrics here. But if you’re looking at me to sing the song, you’ll need to wait until I’m seriously inebriated 🙂