One, Two, Freddie's Coming For You...

 My youngest son thinks I’m a curmudgeon. I do not like Halloween.  I don’t recall ever liking Halloween.  Still, to my credit every year we carve a pumpkin; costumes are bought (sorry Mom, no sewing here); pumpkin seeds are roasted and dutifully stored in an airtight container until they mold; trick-or-treating candy is purchased; children are taken trick-or-treating; and, we even do a little display on the porch with a skull, a ghost, and lights.  I do not like Halloween.  This is the one holiday of the year that I really want to sit out.

I don’t understand the fun of carving pumpkins.  I’m not artistic, so perhaps my disdain in this area comes from barely being able to use even a good knife to fashion some triangle eyes and a distorted mouth.  A very distorted mouth.  So, then the gourd sits on your porch for a few days, molds, looks kind of yucky, and eventually collapses in on itself. Not good.

Costumes. I will stick to a review of children’s costumes and steer away from the women’s sexy anything costumes.  Commercial children’s costumes are a racket: money makers for movie makers.  Yes, of course, the more attentive parents fashion wildly fantastic costumes from three hairpins and a skein of multicolored yarn.  I’m not that parent.  Sorry, Mom, I’ve never sewn an Indian prince or wizard costume for even one boy.  I have, however,  pinpointed the root of my costume annoyance:  I grew up in the Midwest.  One October, you might have an elaborately hand-sewn and beautifully sparkly gossamer angel costume (thanks, Mom!) complete with wings and a halo. The temperature plunges.  It snows.  A record snowfall, mind you – not just some flurries.  So, you wear your angel costume under a heavy coat, snow pants, snow boots, and mittens.  No one knows you are an angel.  So, the next year, Mom makes you a heavy felt Indian princess outfit – complete with fringy heavy felt leggings, a warm headdress, and even sleeves long enough to cover your hands to avoid the frostbite which is sure to come.  October rolls around and it is the warmest one on record in a century, so you trudge, sweltering in your felt from house to house, begging melty chocolate.  Costumes were no fun.

Scary things.  No.  Just no.  My middle son watches “American Horror Story” regularly.  He has enjoyed going to haunted houses and the place called “Plantation Blood” almost every year since middle school.  He and friends watch scary movies throughout the year.  This son will watch a scary movie, recount the plot to me, and I will laugh.  The writers of most of these movies obviously drink too much cheap vodka to think coherently, much less write a well-conceived plot. But, ask me to watch one and I will run.  I am spooked by the smallest scary things; and, being the age I am, I see no reason to challenge or change this part of who I am.  I watched a number of the Nightmare on Elm Streets with my sorority sisters.  The nights that followed such viewings were filled with mini-heart attacks as I walked home from the library late at night.  The smallest rustle was transformed, “One, two, Freddie’s coming for you…”  

I know there is a crowd of evangelical folks who feel that Halloween is Satanic and therefore we should protect our children from this pagan holiday.  Whatever.  The vast majority of children in this country love Halloween because they get to dress up and get candy.  The majority of the adults that I know like Halloween because they have kids who like it, or they like dressing up and getting drunk.  I know a lot of people – I’ve lived across the ocean and back, and in several states.  I even lived in the purported witchcraft center of Europe: Latvia.  I have friends of all religions and non-religions, from all ethnic backgrounds.  I have never even met a Satanist.  Are our churches really worried that one night of candy collecting amidst lighted pumpkins will turn our children into Satan-worshippers?  That logic doesn’t hold enough water to bob for apples in.

Perhaps the combination of the costume disappointments of my childhood coupled with my feeling that children dress up and play whenever they want combined with the fact that I always keep a little bit of candy in the house for my kids have all caused me to be blinded to the point of joyfully participating in this holiday.  As an adult, I have no motivation to dress up as anything, and I most certainly don’t need Halloween to encourage me to have a drink.  Perhaps I am a curmudgeon.  But, just because I don’t like Halloween doesn’t mean I begrudge others their festivities. Have fun making your costumes and parading around.   Enjoy the candy-collecting; come by my house – I buy the good stuff; no tootsie rolls here.  And, when you want to get out of the freezing rain or steamy unseasonable eighty degrees, knock on the door.  I’ll have a light supper, a drink, and comfy chair for you.  I’ll sit out, but I’ll save you a seat.