McDaniel Musings: Hocus Pocus

I know a lot of adults that really hate Halloween for one reason or another. While I do agree with some of their reasons (such as Halloween being an excuse for women to dress in skimpy skanky little costumes and get plastered), I tend to think of Halloween as a children's holiday - a time for them to get dressed up and sugared up and have fun. While I understand that this is not the original intent of Halloween, this is what it has turned in to, and I feel it is a right of passage for little kids to enjoy Halloween. I really don't mind it that much as long as I don't have teenagers showing up to my door asking for candy. Matt and I always joke that we need to have job applications ready to hand out to any kid that looks over the age of 14. Haha!

I have very fond memories of Halloween from when I was a kid. I remember the anticipation of arriving home from school and getting all dressed up and ready to go trick-or-treating, even though I still had to wait 3 or 4 hours from the time I was ready because it wasn't dark enough to go out yet. I remember my friends and I walking all around our neighborhood trick-or-treating, filling our baskets to the max with as much candy as we could stuff into them, then skipping home about 8 or 8:30 to check out our loot before crashing from our sugar high.

Here are a couple of very specific things I remember from Halloweens past: I remember the year my Mom dressed my "friend" (I say friend because she is actually my niece by marriage but since we are the same age it was always much easier to call her my friend, or cousin) Charyl and I up as punk rockers. When we went out trick-or-treating that night, I remember these teenage girls laughing at us and remarking that it was funny that were dressed up as hookers. Charyl and I had no idea what a hooker was, and I can't remember if my mom told us or not.

I remember one house in particular in our neighborhood: the Yee's house. They always went all out with music and spooky sounds and tunnels and often one of them would dress like a grim reaper (or something as equally scary) to spook all the little kids that were brave enough to walk up to their house to trick-or- treat. I was always a scardy-cat - I think I only trick-or-treated there once or twice. By the time I wasn't scared anymore I was too old to be trick-or-treating.

Once I was a teenager, some friends talked me into going to a local Haunted Corn maze near Halloween. I hate scary things. I don't watch scary movies, I don't listen to ghost stories, I don't read scary books - I avoid all things creepy. Stupidly, I agreed to go. It was one of the freakiest nights of my life. Ghouls chased me with chain saws, dead people hung from trees and swayed in the wind. A guy that was with us ran screaming away from the girl he was with as we were chased by something scary. I just about peed my pants at every turn. It's a fun memory now, but I will probably never go again. It was THAT scary.

I think the earliest memory I have of Halloween is when I dressed up as a black panther (this may have been in Texas). My mom was a mime and Karlin was a punk rocker, I think. I don't remember trick-or-treating that year (though we probably did) - I just remember our costumes.

It's hard to believe that so many Halloweens have passed by. Now I have little trick-or-treaters of my own to get all dressed up and take out into the cold fall night to fill their baskets with all sorts of goodies. All day long yesterday, Audrey asked me "Is it time to go trick-or-treating yet? Is it time? Is it dark yet? Can we go now?" She must have asked me 100 times! I love the pure innocent excitement and thrill of little children on holidays such as Halloween.

The day started with taking Audrey to preschool. The first part of the day was a normal school day, but the last half hour of school was reserved for their Halloween party. The previous evening I baked up some spooky skeleton cookies for her class (a recipe I found in a "kids foods" cookbook I got for Christmas several years ago). I loaded up the kids, cookies, and Halloween costumes, dropped Audrey off at school, then about 10:30 Kellen and I joined Audrey and her classmates for a little Halloween party. Audrey's class recited some holiday songs they had been working on (all about pumpkins and apples and worms, etc), we listened to a story about a witch who made a witches brew (which Audrey's teacher proceeded to make as a snack for the kids, which included things like pretzel sticks, raisins, sunflower seeds, licorice rope, etc), and then the kids got to enjoy their Halloween treats! It was a pretty cute little Halloween party.

After a long afternoon of Audrey asking if it was time to go trick-or-treating, Matt finally made it home from work about 4, we had dinner, then I put the finishing touches on a few more skeleton cookies. At 5:30 we set out to visit different friends and family members.

You're probably wondering what my children dressed up as for Halloween! Audrey went as a monarch butterfly, and Kellen was Elmo!

After stopping by Matt's parent's house and my mom's house, we headed home to do a little trick-or-treating in our neighborhood. About 7:45 we called it a night and trekked home. The kids each got to pick out one piece of candy from their buckets before bed (they both ate a nutrigrain bar that someone handed out), and then headed for bed. After a good tooth-brushing and putting on warm footy pajamas they climbed into bed, exhausted and ready to go to sleep. I'm sure they dreamed of all sorts of strangely-dressed creatures, candy, and fog machines.