The air is crisp, the mornings are getting into the slightly foggy days of fall. It's the time of year I love best. It kicks off the holiday season. Our books are about families, and family is all about tradition. Let's take Halloween. It's coming up soon. I've already decorated my house with smiling jackolanterns, a few ghosts and scarecrows. I'm not sure when this holiday turned dark and menacing. Today I walked the neighborhood and others are beginning to put up their decorations. When did this get to be about spider webs and big, yucky, spiders? I saw terrible skulls and things that looked scary to me in daylight as an adult. What of little kids who come knocking at those doors on Halloween night? Will they laugh or be scared out of their minds for seasons to come. When I took my kids trick-or-treating, neighbors dressed up in happy witch costumes, or clowns, or other funny things and made it an enjoyable time for the kidlets bringing their sacks to the door.
I guess I'm rambling, but I love holiday traditions that leave people happy and smiling. I'm not sure the new trend in Halloween is the best turn of events. It's time for others to weigh in on the subject. My motto for the month is: Happy Halloween!
Roz
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9 comments:
Roz, come to think of it, you're right. When I Trick-or-Treated back in the day, there were a lot of cowboys, gypsies and sheet ghosts. That's as scary as it got. Was the world really a kinder, gentler place then? Or is it simply media attention that gives so much focus to the darker stuff? Interesting topic, Roz!
We must have lived in a different area -- the scary Midwest :). We walked through fake spiderwebs to get to a lot of the houses (at least, I always assumed they were fake!) My dad dressed in a Frankenstein-costume and would never speak when kids came to the door. One year, he went to our church party, came in after we all did, and no one could figure out who he was. Kids would run up to him, tap his knee, and run away screaming at their bravery.
The best 'trick' we ever did at our house was when my oldest son decided he was too old to trick-or-treat. He put a walkie-talkie in the carved pumpkin on our porch, hid in the bushes, and would talk to the kids coming to the door. "Hey, kid, what's in your bag? Anything for the pumpkin?" Pretty funny to watch the kids' faces when they realized the pumpkin was talking to them.
Hi Roz,
Nothing's up in our neighborhood - just up the road from you. But at Queen Creek, a suburb of Phoenix where our daughter lives, the ugly witches and grimacing pumpkins are already on display. Best, Alison
Roz, we had scary stuff when I was a kid. Frankenstein, Dracula, witches, grotesque faces, cadavers and of course ghosts! There were the more gentle ones, too. My favorite was a tramp. Or we'd wear our parent's clothes. I think the big difference was that most of us made our own costumes, rather than have store-bought ones.
My favorite costume when I was about 6 or 7 came out of a box that my mom and I bought, probably at Woolworth. An actual *real* ready-made costume, not one my mom had sewn. See, my mom made all my clothes, either that or they were hand-me-downs from cousins. So this costume was really special. It was a princess or Snow White or something like that--had sparkles and painted-on colors. Each year for three or for years I couldn't wait to get it out of the box. It was magic. I was a princess. Then I outgrew it. (sigh)
I'm with you, Roz. Have a *Happy* Halloween!
Roz, I love happy holidays that leave me smiling, too, and Christmas is my favorite.
But for Halloweeen, I definitely recall spider webs and Frankensteins and headless monsters and bloodstained victims.
I'll admit, it was scary, sometimes, to have to brave our way to someone's front door. But Halloween was that one holiday where we loved to be scared out of our minds.
Probably because we all knew everything was fake...except the candy. And we were all about the candy! LOL
Best,
Barbara
http://www.barbarawhitedaille.com
I live in a rural area and we usually only have 10-12 kids on average over 30 yrs being here. Mostly they are under 10 yrs old so it's really cute to see the little ones in their first few years of trick or treating. And they love to tell us about their costumes. Some years we've had nobody--no little kids living nearby, they grown up. Their parents (and us too, when we went with our kids) know that on less populated roads the treats tend to be treat bags and sometimes there's even home baked goodies. When I'm in town I find alot of "decorations" look tacky--stuff just thrown on bushes, porches, etc. Does the abundance of dollar stores encourage this rather than the use of pumpkins and natural stuff? Some of the farms around have a day to make scare crows, carve pumpkins and they are quite well attended, a whole family activity.
I always loved Halloween. Especially the costumes. As a kid, I was a Martian, Julius Ceasar (yep, studied Latin quite young and an way costume). I miss all the apple traditions of fall in New England where I went to school. Here in Colorado it seems to mostly snow after midnight but I am hoping this month brings a daylight first snow....just not like last year's blizzard when it took my husband 11 hours to go 10 miles and he still had to stay at a shelter because he could not make it home.
Wow, Merri---I came to Tucson from the Northwest to get away from putting on chains and driving in snow. Your dh's experience sounds like one we had right before leaving the Seattle area. I see on the news you're getting snow in the Sierra's already. May all the flakes be soft and fluffy.
Bytw-I read your post on Judith's blog and so glad you support EL's.
Roz
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