Halloween

Halloween, October 31st every year. As with many holidays and festivals Halloween has roots in pagan practices. It has evolved into an evening of going door to door for candy, dressed up in costumes both scary and cute. It is fun.

As a child I remember getting dressed up in home made costumes. I was a pirate, a bum (what a lack of PC awareness we had then), a robot, a ballerina, a princess. I never really got scary costumes. I have always been somebody who has nightmares if I watch scary movies and get the heeby jeebies in the dark. Getting dressed as something that terrified me was not something I would do.

As an adult I dressed as a nun, as a sheet covered ghost, as a scarecrow. I handed out candy and carved pumpkins. Did you know that the first jack-o-lanterns were made of either potatoes or beets? (I am a cornucopia of useless trivia.) My brother and his family go all out for Halloween and it was fun being around them as they draped huge spiderwebs on their porch and hung gigantic spiders from it. I get a kick out of people who put tombstones in their front yards and have been in garages that look like grottoes.

Lately I have been more and more bothered by what appears to me to be the celebration of death and demons. Maybe it's because of Marvin's passing, maybe I am just getting old. Maybe it's the creepy idea that demons are real and dangerous and I don't want to open myself to that kind of negativity. I don't know.

This year I did absolutely nothing for halloween. I felt good about it.