In my day...trick or treating was about the kids.
There were not a lot of adult parties or dressing up in costume at work. It was about children dressing up in (mostly) homemade costumes and trolling door-to-door for candy. Every year the urban legends were dusted off and repeated...stories about people putting razor blades in apples and poison in popcorn balls.
 |
| Me and Medusa. |
Here is how it rolled in our house.
A week or so before the big day, we decided what we were going to be for Halloween. The choices were limited. We had a box of stuff my mom kept, odd masks and old clothes. The basics were: witch (me for several years running), hobo, ghost, devil and pirate. We had a couple of scratchy plastic masks with slits for eyes, nose and mouth, that held onto the head with an elastic string. But my mom did not go out and buy a new costume every year. And we used old pillow cases to collect the loot. Or our book bags from school.
There were a few times when the costume restrictions were lifted. One year, my sister was Medusa in a school play, and she wore the costume my mom made to trick-or-treat. (The downside was, no one could guess who she was.) One year I wore an old suit of my dad's and was Groucho Marx. But that was in high school, and I didn't trick-or-treat, so I'm not sure that counts.
One of my favorite snapshots from our childhood is of my brother, Paul, sitting at the kitchen table surveying his loot, still dressed in his devil costume.
The upshot is, Halloween was fun. Mom carved the pumpkin, stuck a candle in it and placed it in the front picture window. My folks turned on the yellow porch light and handed out candy while we did the hunting and gathering.
We walked through our neighborhood, and, when we were older and had more stamina, we trolled farther afield, onto the streets of the slightly more affluent, although the pickings weren't necessarily better. There were some houses you made certain to visit to because they had a reputation for good stuff, and others you avoided because the people were just mean about it. And you only went to the houses that had their porch lights on (which is still de rigueur).
 |
| One of Mom's creations. |
When my son reached the age when trick-or-treating was appropriate, either I or his Dad took him out while the other handed out the goods. We called a halt to trick-or-treating when he hit the teenage years. There has always been controversy over this, some people feeling there should be an age limit, others not. But we've always held the belief that the night is for little goblins, not surly teenagers who wear tee-shirts and jeans and thrust a bag at you and growl menacingly.
These days, we can't have bags of candy around for health reasons, so we don't participate. I miss it, but I don't miss the day-after guilt of having ingested one-too-many Snickers. I do make up little goodie bags for the neighbor kids, just because.
I still like the idea of trick-or-treating. I suppose one day, Halloween celebrations will be reduced to parties at school or at the local rec center and that will be it. Because parents are afraid.
Oh well.
I'm going to end my ramblings with the last stanza from my favorite spooky poem, oft read aloud by my sister, Denise, which used to scare the crap out of me (especially when she got to the last line, which she acted out to great effect). It's by James Whitcomb Riley, and it was written in the late 1800's. It's called Little Orphant Annie:
An' little Orphant Annie says when the blaze is blue,
An' the lamp-wick sputters, an' the wind goes woo-oo!
An' you hear the crickets quit, an' the moon is gray,
An' the lightnin'-bugs in dew is all squenched away,--
You better mind yer parunts an' yer teachers fond an' dear,
An' churish them 'at loves you, an' dry the orphant's tear,
An' he'p the pore an' needy ones 'at clusters all about,
Er the Gobble-uns'll git you
Ef you
Don't
Watch
Out!
No comments:
Post a Comment