Halloween in France

We are in a French community called La Ciotat for 2.5 weeks, and here over Halloween. Do they celebrate Halloween here? How can we make this a fun experience for our kids when they will miss out on trick or treating and celebrating with friends and classmates at home?

What are we seeing around us? Many of the French shops and cafes do have decorations. We have seen cobwebs, pumpkins, skulls, witches, skeletons and pirate decorations here and there for the last few days. Nov 1 is a holiday, and last week and this week are school holidays related to fall break / All Saints Day. So many people are here in this beach / sea side town for holidays. We heard that the French do not trick-or-treat, so we planned to do our own 'Halloween Party' in our little apartment. 

This morning we did see many wee littles dressed up like pumpkins and a few princesses and tutus on their way, which was adorable. But most costumes we saw for people over the age of 3 were bloody/zombie/witch/dia de muertos style. 

We did see some people trick or treating, and our doorbell rang at 3pm with a group of 11-ish year olds asking for 'bon-bons'... so I gave them some of the chocolate bars we had bought for our own games. I think they thought it was weird that I gave them chocolate, because the rest of the items in their stash were gummies and candies.

We had a huge list of activities and treats for our day:

- ghost bananas

Decorations at the local 'dollar store' helped us check off items
 fromour Halloween themed scavenger hunt

- a scavenger hunt around town

- decorations made from a colouring book we had

Ava the cat

godess/god

chocolate Mars bar

- making our own minimalist costumes with items we already had. Rachel worked really hard to use her black pencil crayons and cardboard to make a chocolate bar costume. Ava used some existing clothing to be a cat. Jason and I made togas to be a god/godess pair.

- vampire teeth snacks

- ghost cookies

- marshmallow skeleton creations

- treasure hunt 'find the bones and candy' and re-create the skeleton game in our apartment

- monster bowling with a pumpkin and decorated paper cups

- fall themed scattegories

- sticking a blindfolded hand into a creepy slimy bowl of guts game

- getting an oreo from our foreheads to our mouths without our hands game

Jason won the oreo game

- Halloween themed pictionary

- bobbing for apples

- making a catapault and shooting candy into a bowl

We didn't even end up carving our very small pumpkins / very large squash because we had so many other fun things to do! It was a very silly, funny, small family celebration that we all really enjoyed.

Hope that you are having a joyous and safe Halloween that makes you laugh wherever you are!