The Land of Dracula Makes Halloween Its Own

An’ the goblins ‘ill get cha if ya don’t watch out.

“Little Orphant Annie”

James Whitcomb Riley

It could be that after 20 years in Romania, the Peace Corps’s most sturdy contribution to this land known for Dracula and vampires will be Halloween. Observations of the holiday were held in most communities that host volunteers – from a gala event in Bucharest to modest pumpkin-judging contests in Transylvanian villages.  We all recall Jack O’Lanterns, trick or treating, and maybe an apple-bobbing contest in less sanitation-obsessed times – and we’ve brought them all here, to be adopted with locally appropriate variations.

            I attended a particularly charming celebration a few days before Halloween, one that captured this land’s virtues and complexities. The festivities are surely popular with teachers because they provide a joyful opportunity for practicing English – songs included “Humphrey the Blue-Nosed Pumpkin” and “Oh, My Darling Frankenstein.” Older children described – in English – their costumes, which included several skeletons, a few ghosts, many witches, even a scarecrow and a devil with blinking horns. Among the lineup’s refreshing elements was that most of the costumes were homemade – a few ghoulish masks had been purchased as had the pirate hat with skull and crossbones, but most of the witches were in mothers’ black skirts and sweaters, complemented by a healthy dose of her darkest makeup.

            On a table near the stage was a delightful array of “pumpkins,” notable for their color – a dark grayish green on the outside and a luminous orange inside – a metaphor, I thought, for the unity of mankind, or at least this corner of the global village. Here were Romanian schoolchildren celebrating a pagan Celtic festival popularized by Americans and exploited by Chinese manufacturers; further, it was held in an ethnic Hungarian church that traces its roots to the Swiss John Calvin. Though the holiday has arrived here, seeds for the strain of orange globes we turn into Jack O’Lanterns aren’t prevalent, so the carvers get inventive with local “dovleac” and “pepene.”

            The English teacher at the local middle school established a pumpkin-carving competition a few years ago – and it attracts a wild variety of carved and painted faces, all of which must be described in English. Two dozen of 50-odd students competed for bags of candy and a “diploma” -- in Romania, every award must be accompanied by a signed certificate attesting to whatever was won. This year’s event featured a mummy wrap – which team can most quickly consume a roll of bathroom tissue by encircling a member – and a highly competitive pass the broom contest.

Last year, I organized a Halloween party in a local park, assisted by a colleague who had persuaded the town’s mayor to purchase candies and prizes for the best costumes and pumpkin faces. Like a lot of Romanian events, it was very impromptu – neighborhood children saw signs students had made and came to see what was happening.  So many showed up for the pumpkin toss, hokey pokey parade, and a noisy “Itsy, Bitsy Spider,” we ran out of treats.  

This year, I encouraged students in the high school where I teach to plan their own party, and one of the livelier classes of 10^th graders did so. The best costume award went to an Adams Family trio; the most popular activity was watching a brief cell-phone video from the week’s classes, including one of an unsuspecting English teacher (me) leading a choral reading of Riley’s “Little Orphant Annie” -- these articulate students reveled in the dialect.

            This year my contribution was largely academic – I decided to turn a brief talk about Halloween’s origins into an exercise on note-taking and a quiz. When preparing for our party last year, it dawned on me that zombies and vampires as well as the prosaic ghost were all characters that live in the netherworld between life and death. The Day of the Dead is a major religious observation here – no doubt one of reasons why All Hallow’s Eve has so quickly become popular – and American movies have taught students about trick or treating and pumpkin carving, even if they don’t know what a Jack O’Lantern is. That’s something I didn’t learn in school either – but a side benefit of teaching is looking up a miscellaneous fact when you realize it’s going to be part of a lesson. Jack was a crafty Irish farmer who had played a trick on the devil; unable to get into either heaven or hell, wandered Ireland carrying a hollowed turnip adorned with the devil’s face.

            In a nearby community, another volunteer reported that her middle school’s Halloween party attracted around 200 people – students, younger siblings, parents and grandparents. The kids all came in costumes and brought a wild variety of pumpkins – but they had modest interest in the bingo she’d helped students prepare. Instead the celebration turned into an exuberant dance. Likely what the Celtic celebrations were a millennium ago.

            The most elaborate celebration – in Romania or elsewhere – is likely the Halloween Charity Ball held in Bucharest’s Parliamentary Palace. Organized by former volunteer Leslie Hawke to benefit Ovidiu Rom – an organization she founded to encourage Rroma, or Gypsy, children to attend kindergarten – it attracts hundreds of lavishly costumed celebrities the last weekend in October. Sturdy support by Hawke’s son -- the actor Ethan -- gave the event instant star-power; this year’s featured guest was Nicholas Cage.

            The Halloween dance party in my town was far less elaborate, but great fun. Held a week after the holiday, it packed the local Casa de Cultura. Real orange Jack O’ Lanterns decorated the stage and students competing for “king” and “queen” were judged on the basis of their costumes as well as other talents. The latter is abundant here – one boy sang a collection of American songs; a group of girls did a traditional Romanian dance; girls handled arrangements and boys the technology.  The student MCs kept it all lively and relatively under control. 

            School in the U.S. seems to have taught us little about Romania – my picture of Transylvania before I got here was a sparsely settled mountainous woodland. And even some friends who should have known better suggested garlic to ward off vampires.  Somewhere in my photo collection is one of my first “gypsy” costumes, something I’m cautious about mentioning; the status of the real Gypsies here is too complex for this American to comment on.

But for a 10 days we are all delighted to be ghosts and vampires and zombies – sau fantome, vampiri, si zombi – and we’ll let ‘em git us if they wants to.