Halloween is my favorite holiday, even more than Hanukkah and Christmas. There’s no stressful gift buying, card writing, or party-planning. Halloween is even better than Thanksgiving. No visitors, putting up guests, putting up with family quirks, meal planning, bird thawing, pie baking. But those holidays are another story. Let’s focus on All Hallow’s Eve! You dress up as whatever or whoever you want to be, run rampant through the neighborhood incognito while smashing pumpkins (great band, by the way), bogarting candy, and scaring the neighbors. And there’s fun activities to do with your children, too!
I remember my first Halloween as clear as the crisp night air I breathed that night more than 50 years ago in Spokane, Wash. I was 4 and my Mom (then just 22) and her younger sisters, Aunties 1 and 2, took me trick-or-treating. I wore a Walt Disney Sleeping Beauty costume with silver glitter on the front and sleeves. I was gorgeous!
Our first stop was a row of small kitchenette apartments. Mom and Aunties parked the old Studebaker and sat on the hood while I ran to the first door and knocked. The door was opened by a young man, probably a college student. “Trick or treat!” I piped. This guy looked at me like I was some kind of alien on his doorstep. Then the penny dropped. “Oh! Yeah! Hang on, kid, wait right there,” he stammered and shut the door just enough for me to hear him frantically rummaging around.
He returned, dropped something heavy in my bag, and said “There ya go, kid,” shut his door, and turned off the lights. I returned to the car where Mom and Aunties waited like the harpies, ready to pounce. “Whadya get? Whadya get?” they screeched, and Auntie 2 snatched my bag away. There was a silence so profound you could hear field mice farting. My aunt’s eyes grew round as she cried, “Oh, my Gawd!” and slowly pulled a huge, round butterhorn pastry the size of a dinner plate out of my bag. It rose slowly in her hand, like the harvest moon over the hills, and I said, “I don’t think he knew it was Halloween.” Auntie 1 exclaimed, “That’s better than what I got my first Halloween. Some guy gave me a potato!”
The harpies then sent me to the next row of houses to pillage more candy (or pastries) and proceeded to devour my butterhorn. Just my luck! My first trick-or-treat, and I get some Canadian and nary a crumb of pastry, my feet hurt, plus the harpies stole all my Snickers bars and caramels! Ah, good times.
Flash forward 11 years and my brother, Mikey, is going to a Cub Scouts Halloween party. Mom is trying to come up with a costume on a tight budget. “How about a ghost?” (bedsheet with holes). “Or a clown?” (baggy shirt over jeans and Mom’s lipstick). “I know, a hobo!” (baggy shirt over jeans, no lipstick). These were the costumes of her childhood: simple, handy, and cheap. But now kids were into cool stuff like skeletons, vampires, and Star Trek characters.
Mom was trying her best, God bless her, but Mikey’s sad little face was more than I could take. “I’ll make you a costume!” I announced. Age 16 and full of confidence (and myself), I went to work transforming a large box, some crepe paper, and gold gift wrap into a can of Campbell’s tomato soup. I even copied a meatloaf recipe on the back using black markers. Mikey took first prize: a Frankenstein model-building kit! I think he still has that thing.
What I thought was my last trick-or-treat was with my youngest brother, then called John-John. I dressed him up as a vampire and took him in my car to the neighborhood near my parochial high school—a pretty ritzy area—and to the convent. Those nuns could bake and had cocoa and hot cider, too! John made out like a bandit that year, my feet were aching, and Mom was in Snickers and caramel heaven!
As I grew older, I looked forward to Halloween night as much as I did as a child. I remember school parties and going to school in costume—even the nuns wore funny masks; the anticipation of trick-or-treating as I gobbled down Mom’s homemade chili; and finally, that moment when I got to the first house, the air filled with the smell of lit Jack-o-lanterns, hot cider, and popcorn balls. People invited us in for cookies, and it was OK. There was an element of trust and innocence then. I miss that.
Halloween today has been ruined for children by people who misinterpret its meaning. It’s not about witches or devils or playing cruel pranks on little kids. It never was. It was All Hallow’s Eve, the night before All Soul’s Day, when we mingled, in disguise, with Death and celebrated life. The next morning we all went to Mass and remembered loved ones who were much missed.
I thought my Halloweens were pretty much over, except for carving pumpkins and handing out candy. But wait! Three-and-a-half years ago I wed a Brit, and we soon became a family when we adopted his grandson, Mini-Brit. The Brit does not get Halloween. Guy Fawkes Day is his thing. “We filch firewood, build a bonfire in the street, and burn an effigy of Guy, who tried to blow up the House of Parliament in the Gunpowder Plot of Nov. 5, 1605,” he explained.
“Do you wear costumes?” I asked. “No,” he replied. “Do you decorate with pumpkins and stuff?” “Of course not!” he retorted. “Do you get free candy?” “Nooo. We eat black treacle toffee, baked potatoes, and black peas with vinegar!” “So you steal wood from freezing people,” I reiterated, “hold up traffic with an illegal bonfire, and eat gross English food?” “Um, yes,” he mused as he raided the bag of Halloween Snickers bars.
Mini-Brit, however, is 7 and into Halloween like his Grandma. For his first trick-or-treat, he was Spiderman—and our dog, Poppy, was the spider! We ravaged the neighborhood for candy until my feet were killing me. Two years ago, he was Raphael the Ninja Turtle and I wore the Brit’s bathrobe and went as Splinter the Rat ninja master. More candy, more sore feet.
This year, we are the team of SpongeBob SquarePants and Gary the Snail. Mini-Brit, of course, is the sponge. He looked over a store costume and then gazed at me with raised brown eyes, saying, “You could make a better one.” So I found myself watching SpongeBob cartoons and enveloped in foam rubber and yellow felt, wielding a glue gun. The result is, I think, a keeper and potential blackmail photo to haul out when he’s 17 and dating!
I now revel in each Halloween, putting skulls and tombstones in the front yard, draping the porch in fake spider webs, and carving faces on pumpkins. One day, too soon, Mini-Brit will be too old for trick-or-treating. But not me! I’ll still keep a Jack-o-lantern burning until he gives me great-grandchildren. Then stand back and watch this witchy grandma fly, sore feet be darned!
Ariel Waterman scares the neighborhood children with Jack-o-lanterns modeled after her British husband. Send her Snickers bars via her editor, Ryan Miller, at rmiller@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Oct 29 – Nov 4, 2009.
