It doesn’t feel fall-y to wear a t-shirt and shorts to a pumpkin patch in the middle of October. Everything that makes East Coast Halloween special and spooky seems to be a bit lacking over here in California. Of course, it’s hard to complain about being able to go to the beach and trick-or-treating in one day, but it’s the principle, ya know? Here are five elements of Halloween that only us East Coast kids will understand:
- When your mom makes you put a full on puffer jacket under your costume
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It’s Halloween, and it’s probably cold. You’re seven years old. All you wanted to be for Halloween was a pirate, but now you have to be a puffy pirate. On the bright side, you can smuggle more candy into your pockets when mom isn’t looking.
- Halloween literally just getting snowed out
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If you’re from the Northeast, you’ve probably gotten halloween “canceled” before. Or you just watched when New Jersey got so much snow that the governor went on television to publicly ‘cancel’ Halloween and laughed while shoving more candy into your jacket pocket (innovation that excites amiright).
- Pumpkin patches and other Fall activities
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YES THE PICKLE <3333 I discovered recently that Los Angeles doesn’t really do pumpkin patches. They just put pumpkins on pallets in some organization, and you just take one. Also, where’s the apple picking? Apple cider? It still feels weird to do fall in eighty degree weather.
- An Actual Spooky Halloween
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It kinda takes the fun out of being trapped in a corn maze if you’re right next to the 405. On the East Coast, you actually feel like you are in the middle of nowhere and something is just about to pop out of the dense forests that scatter the region. The atmosphere feels a little haunted– a little chilly and crisp as the leaves change and begin to fall. It feels a bit like the right transition into the beginning of winter.
- NYC Edition: Trick-or-Treating literally everywhere
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This is less of an East Coast thing and more of a New York City thing, but growing up everyone lived in apartment buildings. So, we would go through the whole building (there were lists posted in the lobby and in the elevators) and then on to the next. On the way, though, we would trick or treat in every storefront we passed. A jolly rancher from the supermarket, a Snickers from the tailor, two king size Kit-Kats from the brownstone on the corner if you got there early enough. Halloween felt like a community activity that everyone could participate in, made easier by how convenient it was to just walk from building to building.
It’s highly likely that any Californian has an opposite list detailing the things they loved about California Halloween growing up, so take this with a grain of salt. However, if you ever want to pick an actual pumpkin, maybe try dedicating your efforts a little farther east.