Enjoy your dinner Chrissi!
I think it is safe for me to assume there won't be any hands on the menu at your house tonight! 
I did, thanks. And you're right, no fingers or hands on the menu. In fact, nothing halloween-y at all.
Halloween came up here only a few years ago. I have a sweet anecdote from today:
My youngest child (six years) asked me what my favorite thing was about Halloween when I was a kid. I felt quite old when I replied: "When I was a child, we didn't have Halloween." You should have seen his face!
"What - no Halloween? Why? How? Go tell, mom."
Yep, it's true. When I was a child, Halloween was completely unknown in Germany. Later I learned about it and its origins in school, in English class. They call it Landeskunde (applied geography) and it belongs to learning foreign languages. You also learn about the history, customs, traditions, political system and ways of life in the country/countries you learn the language of.
Anyway, Halloween stayed unnoticed in Germany until maybe ten or twelve years ago. Then the shops suddenly had Halloween decorations, pumpkins became fancy, and so on. That was around the time when the children also started to go trick or treating.
I refused to go trick or treating with my children. It seemed (still seems) like begging to me. Anyway, my sister-in-law always went trick or treating with her kids, and she took mine along. We always use the costumes from carnival, and I paint the children's faces.
Two years ago was the only time I went trick or treating (with my youngest). And I disliked every moment of it. I felt embarrased, begging for sweets. But my SIL's kids were old enough to go alone, as were my girls, but the little one was too young to go without an adult.
Now I'm out of the trick or treating quandary. All my children are old enough to go alone (and look after their little brother)
.
Halloween still is an almost exclusive children's thing here. No Halloween decorations, let alone parties, in offices, no costumes for adults. But it changes. There are Halloween parties organised in danceclubs or such, and the twens are the target audience.
And I? I love celebrating Halloween on BetterMost!
