Yuck. My least favorite day of the year. Halloween. When I was a kid it was fun. I think. I've never been a huge fan of dressing up. Probably I'm insecure and don't want to be uncool. When I was a kid living on Prairie Street in Olathe, Kansas, we would wait until dark, grab a bag big enough to hold the stash (we're talking pillowcase - not one of those polite little pumpkin-face buckets) round up the neighbor kids and start walking. No moms to hover. No fear of abduction or molestation or whatever it is we fear now for our children. The only slight spoiler was that we would often have to put our coats on over our carefully planned costumes, because by October 31st it was COLD. We would walk for blocks and blocks and blocks. It was only the rare house that didn't have their porch light on ready to receive us greedy goblins. There were no church "Trunk-or-Treat", no malls passing out candy. (I don't mean there weren't malls. Just that malls didn't pass out candy. Seriously, how old do you think I am?)
By the time my kids were trick-or-treat age Halloween just seemed a bit more creepy, more hard-edged, more evil. We were idealistic and eager to do the right thing. Our kids knew that Santa, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy were all the same person and living right in their house. Not that we didn't have fun with those characters, we just didn't put on this whole charade that they were real. We chose to homeschool for their first few years of formal school, and Halloween was banned from our house.
Seriously! Our house was fun! We just chose not to celebrate creepiness. Which let me tell you, was not easy. We tried the first few years to let Angela dress in non-creepy costumes. One year she was a princess, another a ballerina. But then we'd go to the strip mall in town where they were passing out candy and there would be all the dripping blood, the things hanging from nooses, things back from the dead...yuck. Who wants to celebrate that?
So our tradition became making October 31st a fun family night. We'd turn off the porch light, order a pizza, and have a movie marathon or play games. Lots of fun, no gore.
Now that they are grown, my girls enjoy telling people they've never gone trick-or-treating and watch the astonishment and pity on their friend's faces. They're not freaks for lack of Halloween. And Mark and I now pass out candy to the few neighbor kids that don't go to the local church for their allotment of candy. But I still hate this day and what it celebrates.
1 comment:
I was always a dress-up-er. Remember the year we went to the church and I was Mirium, Moses's sister. I came complete with a baby in a basket. Anyone have any bulrushes? Then there was the Laura Ingles year (or was I supposed to be a pilgrim?). I would wear that dress around the house and scrub the kitchen floor by hand, pretending to be some repressed princess. I don't think I ever missed Halloween, though I did enjoy making fun of those kids who refused to leave our front porch without candy and rang our doorbell during our family fun nights.
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