Halloween's Obituary

I'm a rebel.  Started young… After everyone else had shouted "trick or treat", I'd be the one who chimed in "smell my feet, give me something good to eat"! Ah, the good ole days! I remember annual trips to K Mart for costumes and hoping that each year I wouldn't have to wear my ski coat over my selection.  Growing up in Colorado, it was guaranteed to be snowy and cold and readymade costumes had to be roomy enough for the warm layers underneath.

I shared my childhood between two neighborhoods.  The 31st of October was always a favored family event.  During the school day, Mom was room mother, always in costume. I remember her as a gypsy and a witch.  She was a consummate actress. It's a testimonial to her craft that I remember the details of her characters these 50 years later.

My next door buddy, Jimbo, celebrated his birthday on Halloween. All the kids on our street were invited to his party and dinner was always hotdogs and the cake was appropriately decorated in orange and black.  It was guaranteed to find some wax teeth in the goody bag.  Trick and treating was done en mass and near the 8:00 hour, my brother and I returned home and counted and traded candies.

Our family moved to another neighborhood when I started 2nd grade, I think.  Time for new traditions. We moved next door to my grandmother.  The sixty years age difference was perfect for us (she really was a child at heart). Readymade outfits were no longer the norm.  Costume shopping was accomplished in phases, from notions department at the local five and dime for material, buttons, snaps and zippers straight back to Grandma's house where she cut out a pattern from newsprint, to the sewing machine and finally to the arts and crafts store for face paint supplies.

She loved Halloween and before the threat of treats laced with narcotics, broken glass, etc., you'd be offered a choice of freshly baked goods served from an appropriately themed platter. One year she surprised us all with caramel apples. My favorite memory, however, was the year she gave out money.

The Great Depression changed her generation. Survival skills were honed at their most raw and basic level. Those skills stayed with her. She was an expert of what we would call "up cycling"; always reinventing new from old, beauty from scrap and a weeks worth of meals from just two or three ingredients.

She collected pennies and when the collection jar was full, she would visit her bank and convert cents into quarters which would be given to her grandkids in presentation booklets at Christmas. One year, her penny jar didn't last until December; she decided to count out equal amounts, wrap the change in tidy little net packages (like rice to throw at weddings) and deposit one each to the children.

That year, I must have been approaching "preteendom", because I recall ending my run of the neighborhood and stopping in to help her. Maybe it was upon suggestion from my mother, or maybe it was because my brother had ditched me and I didn't want to go home yet.  None the less, I remember sitting in her formal living room with best view of the street and keeping an eye on her as she opened the storm door and chatted with all the little ones.  I can hear the excited cries of "Look, Mommie, look at what I got!"

Grandma was just as excited and was pleased that her savings that year was sufficient to include the very last trick or treater. It was a very busy night, so much so, that she commented to me "Oh, my,
this is the first year that I've seen so many children in the same costumes"!  Our subdivision had been the target of families living out of town who came by station wagons to get the really good stuff.  So, Grandma didnt't think twice about it.  Of course, we didn't realize it then, but looking back, the truth of it was the children figured out if they changed their grouping at the corner, they could return to her house and help themselves to more. It was a very successful Halloween.

My children carried on the tradition.  They had classroom parties, I was their room mother. I baked treats and entertained the class with homemade "boo bingo" cards.  They wore hand stitched costumes when they were very little and  their own fashion statements as they got older.  My husband would stay home to answer the door and I accompanied both kids to the very last house and helped them carry their overflowing plastic pumpkins back to the house. As they got older, parties replaced
trick or treating and soon, the bewitching hour became the normal curfew.

I don't do Halloween anymore.  The defining moment was the year the children on the other side of my front door were taller than my husband.  I knew these kids, they'd grown up with mine and I didn't believe that trick or treating was a right of passage to the high school experience.

So, for the last several years, our house has joined the "no porch light" group.  We've lived in this neighborhood near twenty years and have seen recent shift in the number of homes with young families.  I know some of the newest families  haven't been told of the no porch light rule and I fully expect someone to ring the doorbell and hope that the door opens.  Some of the less enthusiastic neighbors leave bowls of  candy outside, but I'm not in favor of this practice.

We just leave for an extended dinner and hope that our return goes un noticed and we gain re-entry to the garage without giving false hope to the last of the youngsters.

Maybe this tradition is waning.  Since when did this holiday become so wholesome?  Haven't you noticed the trend of "fall festivals" in classrooms, churches, fraternal halls and retail outlets? Maybe the event has finally come full circle; revisiting agrarian celebrations and perhaps touching on a cultural tone.  Could be? I could be witness to it's epitaph.  I don't give it much thought.

My memories will entertain future generations around the dinner table. I will be reminded of them each year when I tuck a bag of candy corn among the usual groceries. If I happen to move again, to a town which embraces tradition, regardless of it's origins, I will open my door and delight in the innocence of childhood and remember the ghosts of Halloweens past.