“Tu fais Halloween?” my chef asked after telling me to take the day off for Toussaint.

It seemed a weird way to ask, are you doing Halloween? Is Halloween something one does? It is mainly skipped over here: the French don’t get it at all as a holiday, and I don’t seem to be able to explain to them what there is to get. All the aspects of it are pretty disjointed and bizarre. In my eyes, Halloween is the most bastardized and commercialized holiday of them all, way more removed from its original roots than all the other bastardized and commercialized holidays out there. It never really was a big deal for me. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’ve always been all about the candy, but I don’t enjoy being scared and I am terrible at costumes. I can never come up with a good one and I really don’t care to put in the effort, although that is not to say I don’t appreciate the people who do. Watching the costumes was one of my favorite parts of Mardi Gras day. But as with Mardi Gras, Halloween is all about the party for me. And that is how I “did” Halloween. I dressed up (i.e. I put on boots and five articles of jewelry, and that, for me, is a costume), and went to Brain’s house to “do” Halloween in the grand fashion of a Canadian frat boy.

The scariest aspect of Halloween in Paris was the ad in the Metro for Euro Disney’s Halloween celebration. The child pictured (shiver)…Jen’s new Spanish roommate said it best, “I see that ad! I look it and think, ‘Aie, ¡pobrecito!’ ”