It’s Halloween
[Note: This is an edited version of a previous post.]
Halloween was my favorite holiday, bar none, as a child.
The main reason was probably the candy. But the secondary reason – and perhaps it even superseded the candy, come to think of it – was the opportunity even as a little kid to get dressed up in a costume and go out in the dark with other kids, prowling around the neighborhood and ringing doorbells.
Alone, with no adults present after we attained the ripe old age of 4 or 5.
Those days are gone. And not just for me – since I’m not a kid anymore – but for children these days. Everyone under twelve or so has an adult escort or escorts.
But it’s still a lot of fun to see the kids in their costumes, especially the little ones. Which I plan to do in a little while.
I wish I was with my grandchildren, though.
And when I turned twelve or so my dad wouldn’t let me go out on Halloween any more.
I’m wondering how many of my neighbors who have skeletons and ghosts in their yards will have Christmas decorations in December. I don’t think there will be anything as large as the twelve-foot lighted skeletons.
I do, too.
(miss my grandchildren on Halloween, I mean.}
Halloween has always been a favorite of mine.
I was also a big fan of St. Patrick’s Day and Mardi Gras, but my attention to those waned as I grew middle aged.
Halloween is still great fun!
Kate,
This year I noticed an explosion of the “12 foot skeletons.” I think I remember seeing a few last year, and maybe prior, but they are everywhere this year. I’ve done some traveling recently and it’s not just a local phenomenon.
I imagine some archaeologist, a million years hence, wondering what radiation event occurred in 2025 to cause the sudden increase in gigantism in homo sapiens.
Alone, with no adults present after we attained the ripe old age of 4 or 5.
In a rural area I grew up in ( 30 people per square mile at the time) there was no alternative to parents driving us around, though the parents would stay in the car while we went up to the door.
The town sponsored a well-attended Halloween party at the town hall.
My mother made some marvelous Halloween costumes. My sister as Abraham Lincoln—complete w stovepipe hat. The only costume of mine I remember was as a brownie. We never had store-bought costumes.
I made our older daughter a cute witch costume, complete with pointed hat. She was frightened of it. So the next year I made both her and her little sister into pink crayons with felt costumes and hats. I still have the pictures.
Kate, how cute!
Rufus, it’s to be hoped that the plastic will degrade in the landfills before the poor archaeologist is forced to deal with that question. 🙂
I have my attention focused heavily on the ecclesiastical calendar these days, so while my interest in Halloween was already at a rather low level, at this point it’s driven down to essentially zero, as I have no children clamoring to dress up like other kids and October 31 is not a particularly tremendous day on the Orthodox calendar, though there are of course various saints commemorated then.
I made our older daughter a cute witch costume, complete with pointed hat. She was frightened of it. — Kate
Reminds me of Margaret Hamilton who played the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wiard of Oz. One repeated incident was her visits to primary or secondary schools:
Hamilton: Almost always they want me to laugh like the Witch. And sometimes when I go to schools, if we’re in an auditorium, I’ll do it. And there’s always a funny reaction, like Ye gods, they wish they hadn’t asked. They’re scared. They’re really scared for a second. Even adolescents. I guess for a minute they get the feeling they got when they watched the picture. They like to hear it but they don’t like to hear it. And then they go, “Oh…” The picture made a terrible impression of some kind on them, sometimes a ghastly impression, but most of them got over it, I guess… Because when I talk like the Witch and when I laugh, there is a hesitation, and then they clap. They’re clapping at hearing the sound again.
Also, there was an episode of Sesame Street with Hamilton where she reprises her role as a witch. Years later people tried to find a copy of that episode only to find that they had burned the tape. The producers had a huge number of angry phone calls from parents saying that their kids were scared witless.
Love Halloween and I live in the perfect neighborhood for trick or treating. As for decorations, lots of mums and pumpkins but also two ten foot totem poles I made stacked with jack-o-lanterns (carvable fake ones – real would be too heavy). We have nearly 200 full sized candy bars and at 6:34 pm I’m getting a little nervous it might not be enough!
@ Mike – I hope you don’t end up with too many left over candy bars!
I always get things I like, just in case, because our neighborhood is very poorly canvassed by the costumed cohorts.
Not enough kids on the block, and not many more in the surrounding neighborhood. But our pumpkin lights are on and our LED ghost is glowing, and we have a few goodies to disperse.
Mike,
WOW!!
TommyJay,
The witch I could take.
But the flying monkeys?!
Nightmares!
This is my first Halloween WITH grandchildren. It’s my birthday tomorrow and I told husband that for my birthday, I would like to fly from PA to Texas and see the kids and the kids get dressed up for trick or treat. They live in a nice subdivision and one street in particular goes all out. Big decorations, and a few places had adult beverages too, which was a new one for me.
As I get older, Halloween starts to be a bit melancholy what with another year ticked off at midnight….
My mother made this magnificent Barney the Dinosaur costume for my son when he was about 4. People kept stepping on his tail. My mother was an excellent seamstress as well as cook and baker. She told me recently that she misses making costumes for the community theater. She just turned 90 and can no longer feed herself. ALS is a horror.
Re: Margaret Hamilton, Wicked Witch of the West
TommyJay:
A few months ago I watched a YouTube on Hamilton, which I found lovely and a bit sad.
Hamilton genuinely loved children and she first worked in children’s theater. Then, after college, she became a schoolteacher but she yearned to see if she could make a career as an actor.
But she still loved children and after playing the Wicked Witch (most awesome of all time!) she realized children were frightened of her.
She even appeared on Mister Rogers in her witch costume attempting to soften her image. Then, as TommyJay notes, she continued to Sesame Street, but the network pulled the episode after parents wrote in that she had frightened their children.
Later in life she founded a kindergarten and taught there, while still taking acting jobs which came her way.
She sounded like a swell person who lived a worthwhile life.
–“Oz’s “Wicked” Witch Has A Surprisingly Heartbreaking Story”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5OuTonNs14
Happy Birthday, RigelDog!
Chases Eagles:
So sorry to hear about your mother having ALS. It is indeed an awful disease.
I tried to correct the word baptism, but it appeared a double post was going to occur. So I decided to stick with the mistaken entry. I’m all thumbs on my phone!
And now I see the original post is gone. Oh well! Short version, Last night, here in the East Bay, I enjoyed 2 hours of Trick and Treating with the 2 older grandsons–8 & 6, and their neighbor friends.
Mike Plaiss, I love the image of two tall poles with lighted jack-o-lanterns! Maybe next year I’ll get organized enough to do something with jack-o-lanterns. I really dislike the huge skeletons.
Halloween meant candy of course, but it also meant a certain amount of unsupervised hooliganism. The usual weapon was a bar of soap to rub on windows and screen doors, or maybe just ringing doorbells and running away. We moved to the Midwest and I discovered toilet paper was the weapon of choice. There were dangers in being unsupervised.
A transition was made with more adults escorting their children, and then more cars driving around to cover a larger area. The game became a race to acquire more loot. Soon followed by Halloween parties designed to contain and protect the revelers.
My true joy was making elaborate decorations, most of them failed. The simpler suggestions to the imagination were the most effective.
My Brother was a master at designing and building a truly scary scene. One year he’d lined the entrance walk with cornstalks and some custom effects. Parents refused to take their children up the walk away from the street. I’ve never matched that level.
I have a couple of different sets of decorations.
This year (2025) I went with the pumpkin-ghost-witch (kid-friendly) ones.
Another year I will do the inflatable fire-breathing giant dragon and the skeleton knight.
A third year will be the inflatable giant spider and associated spooky stuff.
Some of the decorations get to be “extras” in more than one “show.”
I don’t mind the giant skeletons per se, but I find that yards with every inflatable possible and too much other stuff are over-stimulating, and I can’t really enjoy looking at any of it.
We have a nephew whose family makes a big production of putting all of their skeletons (various sizes) in “coordinated” costumes. One year they did a “career day” exhibit, one year a football field with all the different kinds of players, this year the Oz characters (a bit of serendipity with our Margaret Hamilton bios).
Very clever, and not over-powering.
@ tallowpot > “I’ve never matched that level.”
I don’t even aspire to that level!
I worked with a radio engineer many years ago (c. 1978) who put a carved jack-o-lantern outside his door on a swiveling turntable, lit the inside of course, and installed a tiny speaker. He had a very early version of a door camera, rigged by himself.
From inside the house, when the doorbell rang, he would speak into a mic to the kids, swiveling the turntable so the Jack was looking at them directly.
Pretty spooky.
addendum to the sad story of Margaret Hamilton, who did her acting job much too well — she was badly burned by the “fire escape” special effect, which involved real flames around the dropping trap door.
There are some distinct benefits to CGI, but I miss the sheer ingenuity and mechanical genius of the Old School effects in the movies.
We all enjoy the Myth Busters’ look at the backgrounds of some of them.
I would certainly agree Kate. Proper Halloween decorating is all about tasteful not tacky. Sounds easy enough, but evidently not because there is a lot of tacky out there.
Regarding all of my trick or treaters, I live in an affluent suburb but not so affluent that the houses are far apart. Parents from nearby suburbs bring their kids to our neighborhood to trick or treat. We often see minivans pull over and half a dozen kids or more will come spilling out, which is great. I’d say nearly half my trick or treaters are Hispanic, and there aren’t a lot of Hispanic families in my neighborhood. My best guess based on candy-purchased-to-candy-left-over is that we had about 175 kids. Love it. Keeps me young, at least at heart.
My favorite Halloween memory from when my kids were little. A guy in the local ‘trick or treat’ neighborhood – the only one with enough safe and contiguous streets to walk in – would disguise himself as a bush. The first year he stayed in the same place but after that changed it up by moving around the neighborhood and jumping out when kids passed by. It became a ‘thing’ to find him before he could jump out and startle you. Clever and simple fun.