Trick or Treat!

All Souls Day, All Saints Day, Samhain, souling, guising, Guy Fawkes Day, Dia de los Muertos…Day of the Dead…pretty much all the same celebrations are celebrated in many places around the world. The tradition of Trick or Treating got it’s start via the original celebrations where someone dressed as a spirit danced around a bonfire and people threw gifts and coins to appease the spirit and get it to go back to where it belongs. Some cultures believe the day is when souls are allowed to come back to the world and visit their family members again.

Whatever the source, Halloween has always been a fun and lighthearted holiday for me. I didn’t come from a family that thought it was somehow glorifying demons or worshipping the devil, thank goodness. We were not allowed to do tricks on people if they didn’t give full sized candy bars, either. I never went with kids that egged houses or TP’d the trees and shrubbery, either.

I remember the fun crafts we made in school for Halloween. Pumpkins with Jack-o-Lantern faces, black cats with bright green eyes, witches with pointy hats riding on brooms. We drew and colored, cut and pasted, and hung our decorations around the classroom. Then, on Halloween, we were allowed to put on our costumes, parade around the hallways, then return to our rooms for a party. It was great fun! We filled up on popcorn balls and candy corn, Hershey Kisses and lemonade then when school was over…we anxiously waiting till it got dark enough to go from door to door.

Mr. FixIt and I were talking about it on our way home from dinner last night. We come from a generation where it was still safe enough to send your kids out in groups to go door to door and extort…or I mean, beg for candy. We knew what streets gave out the good stuff. I was probably one of the only kids that loved getting a new toothbrush. Mr. FixIt said they stayed away from the dentist’s house. Our only ordered were…we had to bring everything home and show it to Mom before we could eat it and we couldn’t go more than three streets away. We also couldn’t pass Grand Central Avenue. That was a busy street.

My earliest real memory of Halloween itself was the year I had chicken pox. I must have been around nine years old. Mom propped me up on pillows on the sofa so I could see the kids’ costumes and…you know…really SEE all the fun I was missing. Bless her heart…she meant well. The thing I think about now is…I was sick with a highly contagious disease, my mom was taking care of me, I was less that six feet from the door, and my mother was handing out virus-laced candy to all the kids in the neighborhood. Talk about a super-spreader event!

I continued to go Trick or Treating with my friends till we were well into high school. We always dressed up at work through the years. And there were the countless Halloween parties along the way. Taking my own kids wasn’t easy when I had to work. Hubby #2 usually took the kids out while I stayed home and handed out candy. I remember one particularly cold Halloween in Denver when Daughter #1 went as Wonder Woman. Her costume was cheap plastic because that’s all we could afford. Her costume completely froze, then BROKE, then shredded in little pieces and fell off. She was devastated. That’s the last year we went with cheap store bought costumes.

We live so far out in the country now, we never get Trick or Treaters. I really like all the Trunk or Treat events they have now. I think it’s fun and certainly safer for the kids. Here’s something I will never do. I will never as a kid, “Don’t you think you’re a little good old to go Trick or Treating?” Because…they’ve chosen childhood over partying somewhere. Kids aren’t allowed to be kids long enough. There’s plenty of time ahead for adulting. So, I give out a great big handful to everybody!

We drove through one of the little towns between home and Parkersburg last night and they were having their community wide Trunk or Treat. It was crazy busy…there were cars parked EVERYWHERE. We drove very slowly through and got home without incident.

It’s going to get pretty cold this week and we’ll be getting our first frost of the season. When we got home, I told Mr. FixIt I was going to “camp” in the camper and he was welcome to join me if he wanted. He declined, but I went on out. It will be no time and it will be really, really cold and I won’t be as inclined to sleep out there. It’s very cozy with the little ceramic heater and the new blankets I brought out from the house. After living on a bluff overlooking the Ohio River through a particularly hard winter, there’s no weather that scares me away from camping!

So, October is over and a new month begins tomorrow. This is where we start to slip into the holiday season and the rest of the year will be a blur. I encourage you to slow things down. Take some time to enjoy and savor every morsel, every moment. It’s all over way, way too soon.

???