It’s 1998 in Finneytown, Ohio. I’m seven years old and treading water in the YMCA pool. So is my twin sister. The swim instructor, a blond, nondescript woman wearing one of those ugly block color bathing suits is standing at the edge of the pool. A few weeks later, she will save my life when I jump into the deep end, trying to impress my dad with my newly acquired swimming acumen. My dad, back from a long trip to the Gambia, will think I’m waving to him. But that’s not for a few weeks. Right now the swimming instructor is perplexed. It is Friday, October 31. Around 6pm in the evening. And we are the only kids in the pool.
“Aren’t you going to go trick-or-treating?” she asks us.
In retrospect, maybe she wasn’t concerned so much with the social repercussions of our not trick-or-treating as she was irritated that she still had to teach that Friday night.
“No,” we both say.
Of all the American rituals to explain to a foreigner, Halloween is the hardest. It just sounds so dangerous. Dressing up in costumes that make you indistinguishable from one another, knocking on the doors of strangers (white people most likely) and begging for candy. Maybe your neighbors aren’t supposed to be strangers, but when you’re immigrants and your base knowledge of America is supplied by CNN and Jamie Lee Curtis movies, it makes sense to be cautious. I mean, when you really think about, it wasn’t a big surprise my parents said heck no to Halloween.
We had moved to America a few months earlier and my sister and I were just trying to keep up. The Spice Girls were huge, “That was the bomb” was the highest form of praise and my classroom crush Roger had told me in that casually devastating way of second graders that my breath stank. I still hadn’t recovered.
Kids would ask us where we were from and we told them we were Nigerian but lived in the Gambia, this tiny, tiny place off the coast of the Atlantic, the size of your fingernail on a map, where we lived in a nice large house with a maid and a driver and a gardener and no, there were no lions only crocodiles in this special place called Kachikally. You could stroke their backs and they looked like statues because they were so still and white. They were supposed to make you fertile.
That Friday, we went home and took out our cornrows. We watched a Halloween-themed edition of Kids Say the Darndest Things. Neighbors rang the doorbell. We had no candy.
The seed of discontent was born.
Over the years, when asked why I didn’t trick-or-treat or play with ouija boards or read tarot cards or follow my horoscope, or why I hated the whole fortune-telling plotline in the Harry Potter books (books I read clandestinely, intrigued enough by the attention to detail in this alternate universe to ignore the fact that they were all witches and wizards), I would struggle to explain.
In the West, perhaps I would begin, a little pompously, people don’t think witchcraft is real. But in Nigeria, some people consult witch doctors. Pastors drive out demons. In 2001, the torso of a young African boy was found floating in the River Thames. Police never confirmed the identity of the boy, but it was believed to be the result of a ritual killing.
Our film industry, Nollywood, thrives off the evil machinations of jealous wives who slip their husbands herbal medicines to render them infertile. My grandmother, who lives in Kaduna, talks casually about the witch they drove out of their church. Penis theft is a thing. People join cults, get possessed. To my very conservative Christian parents, any celebration of the dark arts, coupled with the whole begging white people for candy thing, naturally made Halloween festivities of any kind strictly verboten.
So my parents oscillated between indifference and active hostility towards the holiday depending on where we were living at the time. We moved to Rhode Island a few years later and we had a little brother now and since he was a boy and the youngest, when our friendly next door neighbor asked if he wanted to go trick-or-treating with them— my mother surprisingly said yes. (I suspect it had something to do with the fact that our neighbor’s new husband was Moroccan. He was at least from the continent.) I decided to come along even though I didn’t have a costume. Our neighbor’s son gave me a red clown wig. My brother wore a firefighter’s outfit he had handy from a school play and we walked around the neighborhood in the semi-darkness. I acquired an ongoing affection for Milk Duds. Otherwise, nbd, I thought.
When we moved to Pittsburgh, we went to a large church where there was this functioning ecosystem of Christian alternatives to the secular world—a new currency called Bible bucks and a gift store to buy fully-illustrated children’s Bibles, and hip Christian music albums. Instead of trick-or-treating on Halloween, kids could go to a harvest celebration. They could drink apple cider (hot apple juice) and frolic in the leaves and whatnot.
When my brother demanded a costume one year, my mother bought him a Bible Man costume from the family Christian store. The outfit was inspired by a famous passage in Ephesians where Christians are called to wear the breastplate of righteousness and carry the shield of faith. My brother didn’t care too much because he had a sword and a mask. He might as well have been African Thor.
As for me, I was lukewarm on Halloween too. It depended on how intense the peer pressure was that year. In high school and middle school, I’d wrap a gele on my head (stiff, brightly colored fabric worn on Yoruba women’s heads: the scourge of many a short person at any college graduation ceremony). “You look like the Chiquita lady,” the white kids would say. They loved it.
Nowadays, I have an arsenal of true statements to fling at the interlocutor who asks why I am not in costume. “Because Halloween is just an excuse for people to be racist,” I can say, or “it’s just an excuse for people to get uproariously drunk,” or “it’s just an excuse for grown people to act like children” (shout-out to A. O. Scott). It’s not like I haven’t toyed with the idea of me and sixteen of my closest friends dressing up as every Beyoncé from Beyoncé. It’s not like I haven’t contemplated dressing up as a slutty baby wearing a baggy onesie and carrying a phallic rattle.
But it doesn’t seem to be worth the effort, quite frankly. I still like Milk Duds, though.
Holy smokes, I haven’t thought of Bibleman in years.
I had almost completely blocked out memories of all those Bible-based cartoon shows (with the obvious exception of VeggieTales, which was awesome)… dammit there goes my afternoon.
Bibleman references make me want to watch Charles In Charge.
I was sent to Catholic school from kindergarten through high school graduation, so I missed out on a lot of those, but got others (and we watched THE TROUBLE WITH ANGELS with Hayley Mills like a dozen times in middle school, it was clearly the best).
There was one cartoon where kids traveled back in time that I’ve been trying to figure out what it was, because it was my favorite series, but the teachers wouldn’t let us watch it after 1993 or 1994, for some reason. I want to know why! Like, it disappeared from the video library.
Of course, we never got Bibleman or Veggie Tales. I saw Veggie Tales Silly Songs when I was in college and it was delightfully amazing.
Are you referring to Adventures in Odyssey?!!! Please tell me I have found someone to bond with over Adventures in Odyssey! The show wasn’t strictly about time travel, but Mr. Whittaker did have a time machine.
OK technically the Imagination Station wasn’t a time machine, but it would allow you to insert yourself in history within your imagination and have a vivid adventure. That didn’t stop the episode about John Merrick from giving me nightmares.
So, I loved Aventures in Odyssey a lot as a kid, although now as a grown scientist I hold a grudge against Focus on the Family for the episode where Lucy bravely stands against learning Evolution for setting back my personal growth for several years. In a perverse way, thank God for my lackluster public school education, because i didn’t actually learn about the concept until I was in college and in a considerably more liberal phase of my life.
If anyone wants to talk about how Brio harmed their self-development, I am also here for that.
I know. Focus on the Family programming was very big in my house growing up. My mom still doesn’t believe in evolution, and used to feed me all kinds of propaganda including creationist books, radio programs (including songs about how evolution isn’t real) and TV…but she was worried when I started reading Harry Potter.
I’ll forever have a soft spot in my heart for Mr. Whittaker, though.
WHIT!
Fun fact, the Focus on the Family magazine article about how Harry Potter is evil gave me a panic attack as a child. (My parents had no concerns about what I read, though. Bless them for that.)
BRIO.
I remember a horrible article about how your makeup and hair shows the world who you really are, and they compared a “goth” look to associating with the devil.
Bless.
I remember lots of stuff about how a good Christian girl shouldn’t date until she was ready to get married. I probably wouldn’t have dated in high school anyway (because I was hella awkward), but that didn’t help. My parents, on the other hand, probably would have been fine with me dating. I don’t think they really realized how conservative the stuff they were handing me really was.
Also, there was a column about how Star Wars’ philosophy is slightly Buddhist, so consume with care.
Oh my god, I thought I was the only one who put up with Brio. I sprouted the breasts of a grown woman when I was all of about 13, and between Brio and church camp (where they stuck me in XL shirts so I wouldn’t distract my brothers in Christ), I was convinced I had done something terribly wrong to be inflicted with them. I finally stopped trying to believe when I was about 15, but I’m 21 now and still not entirely past the various damages from Brio and that life as a whole.
I’d forgotten that existed!!
Do you remember the episode where a visiting friend got the “good” kids to play “Castles and Cauldrons”, and opened themselves up to demonic activity???
Scared the beejebus out of me as a kid, and made me wary of “Dungeons and Dragons” for YEARS, until I finally saw a game played and realized how completely beige it is.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superbook
Oh my God! I loved Superbook, but forgot about it! Did you watch The Flying House?! http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Flying_House_(…
.I think I know what you’re talking about! It was like three kids on an archeological dig, and somehow they got swept into various Biblical times and places? I remember the Genesis one being trippy. And holla to Veggie Tales.
The show was “The Greatest Adventure: Stories from the Bible.” The animation, storytelling and voice work were pretty decent, and kinda mature given the intended audience. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Greatest_Adventu…
It’s not like I haven’t toyed with the idea of me and sixteen of my closest friends dressing up as every Beyoncé from Beyoncé.
This sounds amazing and I really hope you do this someday, maybe for a birthday or Beyoncé day (isn’t there a Beyoncé national holiday yet?) or something.
Every detail of this piece is so acutely observed, but the Bible Man costume is killing me. I’ve only moved on the outskirts of megachurches and the church economy, but I definitely remember visits to the family bookstore and looking at familiar-yet-unfamiliar Christian alternatives to secular books, movies, and accessories. That’s a spooky story in itself.
A) the pic of the two of you in matching dresses and lunch boxes? The cutest thing.
B) penis theft!
C) engaging, funny, incisive writing. I mean, maybe that should be A) & not C), but come on. The guy looking on from the van appears to be stunned into immobility by the twin cuteness.
Haha, thanks. That guy looking from the van is my dad 🙂
What Dakimel said! Engaging, funny, incisive writing and a treat to read!
Dear Ms. Obaro, as a 38 year old man, I thought I had outgrown scary things on Halloween. Then I read the article you kindly linked to about penis theft. I got about halfway through, and now I anticipate hiding under my desk for the rest of the day.
thanks in the spirit of the season, I suppose.
James
Good show Tomi!
Instead of trick-or-treating on Halloween, kids could go to a harvest celebration. They could drink apple cider (hot apple juice) and frolic in the leaves and whatnot.
This sounds great. Most of the alternative Halloween celebrations I’ve heard of have sounded a little didactic or reflexively defensive, but this just sounds like a lot of comfortable fun.
In middle school we had All Saints Day parties at CCD — pretty much everything you’d find at a Halloween party except you had to dress as your favorite saint. Kateri Tekakwitha and St. Francis–bathrobe, beanie babies– were big. I had a Renaissance lady costume and went as St. Catherine “the Vatican is a cesspool” of Siena. (We always went trick or treating too, and my church actually hosted what I remember being a *terrifying* haunted house.)
I dressed up as St. Francis for a (protestant tho???) church party & it was one of my favorite costumes as a kid.
(supposed to be a reply to nelly_bly)
I remember one year my childhood church’s magazine suggested that as an alternative to Hallowe’en, parents might host an Angels & Saints party. The article had ideas for light refreshments (sadly forgotten) and suggested kids dress as angels, or particular saints, or as characters from the Chronicles of Narnia. But I don’t think the idea created many ripples at the time – we were still doing old-fashioned Northern Ireland Hallowe’en back then. On the other hand, I was talking to a neighbour with a young child about this recently, and she says that a lot of her daughter’s friends’ families are very anti-Hallowe’en due to Christianity. So I guess we might see some alternatives popping up again!
I’m sorry, I realise this is really a very minor point, but the clause “Penis theft is a thing” has simply made my day. Happy Hallowe’en!
“it’s just an excuse for grown people to act like children.”
True, but for me, that’s pro, not con.
According to the linked article, that is not enough. I’ve closed the link due to squeamishness, but apparently in some variations of the hysteria – which is present in Nigeria, China, Thailand, and India, at least at various times in the 19th and 20th Centuries–women reported that their genitals were shrinking and disappearing as well.
This is a disturbing thing, but it does furnish some excuses in the bedrooom. “No, you’re not doing anything wrong, honey, it’s just that damn warlock messing with my genitals again. Try tomorrow, okay? G’night.”
I really enjoyed your piece – especially this:
Maybe your neighbors aren’t supposed to be strangers, but when you’re immigrants and your base knowledge of America is supplied by CNN and Jamie Lee Curtis movies, it makes sense to be cautious.
Just shows how weirdly and haphazardly customs develop – if someone invented Trick or Treating tomorrow, nobody would never go for it! As it is, I’m hearing from some friends in the US that they had no kids at their doors at all this year, apparently due to parental wariness…
As for Milk Duds, after years of vaguely wondering, I just looked them up and Wikipedia describes them as “historically enrobed with milk chocolate”, which I think connotes a certain quiet dignity.
This was my life >> “In high school and middle school, I’d wrap a gele on my head (stiff, brightly colored fabric worn on Yoruba women’s heads: the scourge of many a short person at any college graduation ceremony). “You look like the Chiquita lady,” the white kids would say. They loved it.”
Loved your piece. I can totally relate. I was born in Rhode Island to Nigerian parents and Halloween was just whatever. Most families in my neighborhood were immigrant families so Halloween wasn’t really a thing. It wasn’t until we moved into a white neighborhood that my mom finally gave in and started buying reeses Pnb cups. I remember dressing up once: I wore vampire fangs and my basketball uniform.