Our First Halloween

The Best Networking and Cultural Awareness Activity

I’m one of those Ukrainians who never really liked — or even understood — this strange holiday. We never celebrated it, never gave it any meaning. From the post soviet perspective, it always looked like some bizarre spectacle with skulls and spiders.

But living in a country where Halloween is one of the most beloved days of the year, and seeing it all “from the inside,” I can now say: wherever I live from now on, I’ll be waiting for it with excitement.

I’ve never seen, let alone joined, anything like this. A real Halloween is actually a bright and kind holiday, where every house waits for kids to come by so they can treat them with sweets. Almost every house on our street was decorated with carved pumpkin lanterns and all sorts of incredible things I can barely describe — from spiders and skeletons the size of houses to blaring music, bonfires, and even grim reapers with scythes.

The way Canadians compete to see who can decorate their home in the most creative and spectacular way could inspire a full academic paper. But I’ll restrain myself.

The tradition is simple: kids go door to door saying “Trick or treat!” and get candy in return. I haven’t studied where exactly this holiday comes from — I love trying to understand the meaning of such things from my own observations and feelings.

At first, I didn’t want to participate at all. We didn’t have a porch, we hadn’t put a pumpkin outside, and I thought that would be the end of it. But skipping it when you have kids? Not an option. At school, there were costumes and a sweet table, our street was drowning in pumpkin décor, and neighbors kept asking when we’d be dressing up and coming by.

Friends here also kept encouraging me to join in, so eventually I learned the “rules,” we dressed up, and went candy collecting together.

From my understanding, Halloween is about saying goodbye to autumn, bringing joy to children, and acknowledging — not ignoring — that death is a natural part of life. It’s also about dressing up, being a little scared, and embracing playfulness.

I had a genuine cultural shock. Every house was so well-prepared: when my kids knocked, the neighbors would open the door to reveal huge boxes of candy, letting kids choose what they liked. I’d been told to bring a large tote bag to empty the kids’ buckets into periodically, and I thought, “Come on, we won’t collect that much…”

Well. Two blocks later, with the bag filling up fast, I was walking and watching the lives of these incredibly kind people who stood on their porches, eager to meet us, greet us, and treat the children. Parents strolled with their own little sharks, witches, and monsters, stopping to chat about costumes and neighborhood news.

Meanwhile, my mind wandered to another reality — many here have no idea what is happening in Ukraine, or how we ended up here.

But my biggest takeaway? Halloween is the best networking opportunity. If I were job hunting, I’d absolutely be handing out my resume and practicing my elevator pitch at every door.

Half-joking.

In truth, we met all our neighbors within two blocks, and I received so much kindness and so many smiles from Canadians that I can only praise myself for embracing local traditions — even the ones that once seemed so strange and alien.

Lesson learned: open your mind and break through both the visible and invisible boundaries of the world.

October 31, 2022.