Halloween. Highly divisive among adults, universally loved and adored by children ages ~12 and under.
I used to LOVE Halloween. Being a chubby child with a hyperactive imagination, Halloween was the absolute best! It was the one day of the year when everybody else gets on board, dresses up and plays fantasy make believe with you. And never, ever discount the free candy. Layer on all the creepy Puritan backstory (the one night of the year when it was good to be bad, to exorcise personal demons. Mix in the turning of the leaves, the crisp night winds and the looming darkness of winter and you have all the ingredients for an exciting and magical stew. Go dust off Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes and you will know what I am talking about.
Malcolm and Eliza — being 3.5 and 5.5 respectively — are really into Halloween. Malcolm insisted on picking out his dinosaur costume. He has been wearing it all day, every day since it arrived. Eliza has no idea that her mom spent 3 dollars at a tag sale on her spider princess dress; she loves it unconditionally. Our household has been one October of Halloween festivities. There have been Halloween parties, pumpkin carving and pumpkin seed roasting and walks to spot the Halloween decorations in the neighborhood. And this week, there will be Halloween parades at school, a pumpkin stroll in town and finally, at long last, a Saturday of knock down drag out Halloween Trick or Treating. As my former boss (and Bad Papa in his own right) Steve Orent once said, it’s all about making memories. And man, have we been minting them this month.
The best $34.95 I ever spent.
But something happened along the way. Before I was a parent, Halloween lost its meaning. Maybe I just got lost. Halloween became just another Hallmark holiday, an artificial event pumped up to sell candy and other toxic crap. It was mirthlessly marked by ill-conceived last minute costumes, random apartment parties, sexy nurse costumes and bad hangovers. Halloween was a line of demarcation, signifying a return to a bleak Winter existence devoid of joy (Clearly I spent too many years of my life in New Hampshire). But fundamentally, this was a phase of my life devoid of innocent pleasures and precious little sense of true wonder.
Halloween was a line of demarcation, signifying a return to a bleak Winter existence devoid of joy.
But you know what? I LOVE Halloween again. My kids have helped my leave behind the bad Halloween phase of my life. So bring on the Edward Gorey! I am going to get my hands on some John Bellairs novels, and maybe a Stephen King novel or two. We need more ghost stories, more mystery, and more surprises (of the delightful kind). And I cannot wait to go out into the autumn dusk this Saturday as one big goofy Halloween crew.
— Bad Papa East