I grew up in the Mid-Atlantic states on America's East Coast. So to me, "fall" means colorful leaves, chilly weather, apple picking, corn harvests, and hay rides. It smells like burning leaves, bonfires, and steaming apple cider, and it tastes like pumpkin bread, s'mores, and roasted turkey. Fall is back-to-school, Halloween, and Thanksgiving-- one long season of celebrating harvests and food, with field trips to the apple orchard and pumpkin patch, and parties with family and friends.
In Spain, fall is NONE of that. The Spanish literally would not understand a single element of the above paragraph, except back-to-school. That's it. Fall in Spain is simply the beginning of the school year and the end of the tourist season, when the locals get their beach towns back to themselves. It is slightly colder. We need jackets in the morning, but by afternoon it is back in the 70's and sunny, even in mid-November. Sometimes, autumn is the start of the rainy season, although this particular year has been sunny and beautiful with a whopping 3 days of rain all fall. It is just a more comfortable version of summer, with the necessity of sending children to school instead of to the beach.
The Spanish do not celebrate Halloween. It is essentially a British celebration, brought to America by early settlers. But All Hallows' Eve was never a holiday in Catholic Spain. They celebrate the next day, All Saints' Day, as a national holiday from work, and an opportunity to visit graveyards and place flowers on their relatives' graves. But jack-o-lanterns, costumes, and trick-or-treating are not part of the local culture or customs. Of course, in recent years, the towns around the Naval Base have watched the Americans celebrate this strange holiday, and many Spanish families come to base in costume on Halloween to get free candy from the Americans who live in base housing. To them, it is like Carnival--a day to dress up and act silly. But they can't comprehend our obsession with cooking, carving, and celebrating pumpkins. There is some Spanish squash, but no typical big orange pumpkins. (We buy ours at the commissary, and they are probably flown in from Germany). So of course there are no pumpkin patches, no hay rides, and certainly no bonfires--the burn ban can't be lifted until it rains a lot, which it hasn't...
The Spanish also don't celebrate Thanksgiving, for obvious reasons--it is an American celebration of the colonists surviving their first year in the New World. Turkey is not very common in this part of Spain, but at least the concept of gathering for a large family meal is not unusual. However, they would probably start their celebration at 10 pm, not mid-afternoon. And of course, the Spanish don't play football. Well, they might call it that, but it's soccer.
And finally, the Spanish don't start celebrating Christmas in October, the way American stores do. There is no mention of Christmas anywhere until, well, December. The Feast of the Immaculate Conception on December 8th is the official start of the Christmas season to the Spanish. So they have to ask the Americans to kindly wait until December to begin decorating their homes and looking for Christmas trees.
So this is probably the ONLY time of year when the Americans have more holidays than the Spanish. Sure, they have local religious celebrations and town festivals scattered throughout the Fall, but it is nothing compared to the never-ending festivities of Spring and Summer. This is also the one time of year when I feel most isolated from my homeland and more like a foreigner than usual. You never realize how much of your life is cultural until you live somewhere else. I thought "autumn" was a universal concept, but of course if I took the time to consider, residents of Florida or Arizona would not have the same sensory reactions to fall that I do. So it has been a good time to enjoy my family, enjoy events on base, and enjoy the culture I grew up with. Because hey, the Spanish don't have a monopoly on holidays. Americans have our own version of fun, too. And we find ways to celebrate our own customs and holidays even in a land of continual sun and palm trees.
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