HALLOWEEN WHILE BLACK
My Family Didn’t Celebrate Halloween — We Had Hallelujah Parties Instead
But don’t sleep — church celebrations are lit
America is a country divided and let’s face it: Black people celebrate Halloween in a different way than White people do. Momentum takes a week-long look at #HalloweenWhileBlack.
On paper, my sleepy, benign town of Colonia, New Jersey, is insignificant. In the time it takes to sneeze, you would have already driven through everything Colonia has to offer. It makes most suburban towns look urban by comparison. Yet, as a kid, none of this mattered to me, because my group of friends and I were adventurers. We were the real-life version of The Goonies.
No, my friends and I never made a blood pact, but we were tighter than a lid on a pickle jar. And while we were very different, like the friends in The Goonies, our experiences connected us.
We had David from Poland. He only knew how to say, “Hi, my name is David,” in English in elementary school. There was Habib, our Middle Eastern friend who could beat us all in Halo 3 and Dance Dance Revolution. And Christian, my Colombian friend who played basketball all day, every day. And there was me, the Black kid, who had a reputation for two things: being a magician and…
