Hanging Onto Halloween

 

 Halloween may be this nation’s second most popular holiday, but I won’t be trick or treating this year. My biggest concern this week is how much candy to buy.  In recent years, that question could also be “how much candy do I want to eat in early November?”

 Each year we get less and less trick or treaters and I eat more Kit-Kats.  Ironically, I wouldn’t buy a ten pound bag of chocolates any other time of the year but in mid-October I get this urge to splurge.  I always buy the candy that I like most because I know that’s what kids will like as well.  What would be the point I buying a giant bag of Smarties if I have to eat them for weeks after Halloween.

Parents apparently had few concerns about their children walking all over town asking total strangers for candy in the 1960’s. If it is our nation’s second most popular holiday, what happened to Halloween? 

Some things are better if we don’t try to understand them.  Twinkies would fall into that category and so would Halloween.  Halloween is this country’s second most popular holiday yet most people on the street have no idea what it’s all about. 

The full history of Halloween is a colorful one.  The holiday’s origins actually go back 2,000 years to Celtic harvest festivals and superstitions.  They celebrated Samhain (sow-in) on the night of October 31 when ghosts of the dead where believed to return to earth causing trouble and damaging the community’s food supply.  Romans added their own twist to the holiday and Christians established a holy day called All Saints Day or All-Hallows Day on November 1. All-Hallows Eve gradually became Halloween according to legend.

Somewhere along the timeline, candy corn was created and an American tradition was born. You don’t have to go back 2,000 years to see how the holiday has changed.  Just ask any 40+ adult and they will describe in detail how “the good old days” of Halloween are gone forever. 

My friends and I literally knocked on hundreds of doors and filled one or more paper grocery bags with candy bars – full size of course. We would return to stack our bounty by brand and swap candy bars as though we were trading wheat futures.

As we grew older and roamed on our own, the danger didn’t come from strangers - it came from the older neighborhood boys.  Tribute was often paid in candy bars to teenagers too old or lazy to trick or treat themselves.

 Halloween has always been a weird holiday for kids.  They get to beg from strangers, eat gross amounts of candy and stay out late on a school night.  Try that on March 31 and your kids will get picked up for creating a disturbance. Halloween also differs from other holidays because it often falls on a school day.  Is there a longer school day for kids or teachers than October 31^st?

Of course the big attraction of Halloween was always the costume. My earliest memories are of cowboy vests and chaps sewn from hokey 1950’s Simplicity patterns. Mom finally broke down and bought me the cheap silk Superman costume with the cheaper mask and painful elastic band.  As my friends and I grew older, originality was no longer a requirement.  We were either football players, hobos or guys in a black t-shirts with scary masks. For a short time, Halloween was just too much fun to miss but too cool to participate in. We halfheartedly put together “costumes” and basically hung out at the neighborhood park causing mischief and hoping girls might come by.  They didn’t. 

These days Halloween has lost some of its luster. More homes than ever turn their porch lights off, candy bars keep shrinking and legitimate safety concerns keep kids from roaming far and wide.     

Still, there’s plenty of fun to go around on Halloween and I hope your kids have as much fun as we did when the sun sets on Monday night.