Halloween in Puerto Rico

Many places around the world celebrate Halloween. In our neighborhood in Puerto Rico, we celebrated it on Sunday instead of the actual date.

All the parents and kids in the neighborhood planned to come together at 4:30 in the park to have a big party with candy, food, and drink where everyone who attended was expected to bring a treat to share with the neighborhood. Then the kids would use bags that they brought and fill them up with candy before they went trick or treating.  There had been a big rain storm earlier in the afternoon and it finally quit about 20 minutes before the Halloween party started.

There were about 100 kids dressed in costumes. I saw one kid dressed as Zorro and another dressed as Indiana Jones. The kids’ costumes were a lot more creative than the costumes kids wear in our neighborhood at home.  Some examples were kids dressed as a banana or as French fries or as a vending machine. I dressed up as a ghoul that had been in a fight. My sister dressed up as a cat.

A surprising number of kids at the party switched back and forth between speaking in Spanish and English. We asked some parents about this and found that many of the kids go to the school near our house. The parents told us that the kids learn both Spanish and English at school and that some families speak English at home.

 

This is me and a bunch of kids in the neighborhood at the party.

After about an hour of the party, everybody went trick or treating to selected houses in the neighborhood. Our neighborhood is made up of apartment buildings and single family houses. The only places we could trick or treat were single family houses because the apartments are locked. People who wanted kids to trick or treat at their house had to have enough candy for everybody.  That’s a lot of candy!

 

This is some of the creative costumes that people were wearing.

Every time kids got to a trick or treat house, they chanted, “Halloween, tricortri; dame chavos, no mani.” This translates to, “Halloween, trick or treat; Give me money, not peanuts.”

After trick or treating, the party ended at about 6:30 and everyone walked home.

Before I moved to Shrewsbury, I lived in a condo in Chicago. Each year at Halloween, we would have a neighborhood gathering and then go trick or treating. This is very similar to how we went trick or treating in Puerto Rico. In Shrewsbury, the younger kids go trick or treating with their parents and the middle schoolers go with friends in the neighborhood. We visit all the houses in the neighborhood and collect candy at each one.

In my opinion, trick or treating with my friends in Shrewsbury is more exciting because you get to hang out with friends you know and you can collect more candy at more houses.