Another cultural observation

I'm pretty sure Canadians (or at least British Columbians) care a lot more about Halloween in general than do most Americans with whom I am familiar. I'm used to elementary school-aged kids dressing up and going trick-or-treating or going to a harvest festival, and I'm used to carving jack-o-lanterns and all that. But up here, it seems like a whole lot more: store clerks were almost all dressed up, and people in our neighborhood went all-out decorating their houses for Halloween - some more tackily than others! And all the radio announcers (except maybe on the Christian station) were wishing their listeners happy Halloween, and playing appropriate music - such as the theme from "Ghostbusters", and Michael Jackson's "Thriller". Back in Washington, radio stations might mention the holiday once or twice on the actual day (not several days leading up to it), and might play a few Halloween-ish songs.

Also, on the news on Halloween night, the news anchors mentioned that police would be out in force to make sure that fireworks/firecrackers (?!) didn't get out of hand, and that there had already been an incident. I mean, I guess sometimes teenagers go overboard on the whole "trick" side of "trick-or-treat" back home - and probably moreso in other cities than my home city - but not so much that it's generally mentioned on the news as a state-wide thing.

And of course, since Canadians have already had their Thanksgiving, they start thinking about Christmas early on in November to an even greater extent than most Americans, I think. I know that stores start putting out their Christmas decorations quite early in the States, too, but since there is still a holiday for us between Halloween and Christmas, we might still be slightly more delayed on switching to the Christmas season than our neighbors to the north.