St. Martin's Day

Yesterday (11 november) it was St. Martin's Day (Sint-Maarten in the Netherlands). On that day children in my country go out as soon as it is dark with their paper lanterns and go door to door. They sings songs and get candy or fruit. When I was a kid we always used to carve pumpkins with the children in my street. My mum made pumpkin soup and after dinner we would go out with our carved or paper lanterns. It was always one of my favorite days of the year. I carved the pumpkin above two years ago. This year we were a little busy so we didn't really do anything related to Sint Maarten, except for buying candy for the kids, but most years I still carve a pumpkin and my mother still makes pumpkin soup (I don't go door to door anymore though, haha!).

Yesterday my mother had put all sorts of candy in a bowl along with some mandarins. I remembered how I as a kid always prefered candy over fruit, so I said to my mother 'Which child is going to pick a mandarin over candy?' But already with the second group of children that came to our house, my mother said: 'The miracle has happened, one of them took a mandarin'. I was sitting in the living room when the third group rang the doorbell. They sang their song and when my mom presented them the candy and the fruit, I could hear a couple of kids yell 'Mandarins!!' enthusiastically. That already surprised me, but then the children's mother said 'Ugh, we already have two weeks of mandarins'.
I don't know what it is with children and their parents these days, haha. Maybe it some sort of reverse psychology were the parents say they hate fruit and love candy so their kid wants fruit rather than candy.