I read on another author’s blog last week that she has an intense dislike for Halloween. Say what? All that candy? Haunted houses? Fireworks? What’s not to like?
I guess it depends. My Liege and I used to host big Halloween parties—adults only, no kidlets. We started doing this before we had kids and we continued for a few years afterward. Then the kids started getting too old to foist off on a grandmother while we partied the night away. Plus, the wood floor in my living room was damaged from too much dancing in high heels (not just me). After I had it refinished, I couldn’t bear to put it through the torture again. And did I mention the work of hosting these parties?
But they were fun. They also created an extremely busy month. Especially after we had the kids and I needed to create not only costumes for My Liege and me, but for the boys. I had it in my head that I needed to create homemade costumes, which I did for several years. Every once in a while, I bought a costume. One year, My Liege wore a cow costume. Youngest Son dug it out for this year’s Halloween. He went to work as a Holy Cow by wearing his cross and a priest collar over the cow costume. I thought that was ingenious! (Which begs the question, why didn’t I think of it?). You could also do this as a couple costume by having one person dress up as the cow and the other as a nun or a priest.
Now that the kids are grown, Halloween isn’t anywhere near as hectic for me as it used to be. I don’t carve pumpkins. I have glow-in-the-dark pumpkins that (to me) work just as well. One runs on batteries and the other plugs in. And I don’t have to worry about anyone smashing them and creating a mess in my driveway.
We live on a large corner lot on a not-very-busy street, so sometimes I need to bribe trick-or-treaters. How do I do this? Candy! At one point Halloween night, I was giving away 6 pieces of candy per kid. I made sure to tell them how many were going into their bags, too. I mean, I bought 300 pieces. I couldn’t be expected to eat them all myself! And I expect those 6-pieces-per to bring me plenty of repeat trick-or-treaters next year.
It was a warm Halloween this year. Trick-or-treating winds down pretty early in my next of the woods, because our local volunteer fire department puts on a fireworks show on the beach that rivals the Canada Day fireworks around town. My Liege and I used to take the kids down there every year. Now we go ourselves. The first year without the kids felt a little sad. One year we stayed home and watched the fireworks from the deck. It’s not the same! Another year we watched them from a viewpoint on the road. Not the same again! Nothing beats standing on the beach with other members of your community while hot chocolate gets handed out (if you stand in line) and a bonfire is blazing, and gorgeous fireworks are filling the night sky.
Any Halloween traditions you want to share? How do you celebrate where you live? Do you like/abhor Halloween?
Too much emotion is frowned on in our culture, especially where men are concerned. And love? Maybe because love is the most powerful emotion of all, it’s scary. Too capable of changing the world, changing who we are. It’s easier to shove love in a container, laugh at it or dismiss it as unrealistic. But romance is important. It moves us, gives us hope, lightens the load of our day-to-day lives where we have to deal with so many things that are sad, hard, and worrying.