I love Halloween.
Nov. 1st, 2005 12:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
naomikritzerThe two women who live across the street built a fire in their firepit tonight, and illuminated their long, dark walk with paper bag luminaria. After Ed brought Molly and Kiera back from Trick-or-Treating, I walked down the block to see the haunted house some of our neighbors set up, and then walked over to say hi and admire the campfire. They had hot cider for the grownups. It turns out that one of them is a grad student at the U of M, and the other works for Como Zoo and Conservatory as an educator.
The haunted house brings kids to our block from all the nearby blocks; we always have a lot of trick-or-treaters, and this year was no exception. I gave away about 130 pieces of candy, though until 7 p.m. we were giving away two at a time.
Molly dressed as a ghost, using a white tablecloth I picked up at the Arena Sale (a huge rummage sale held by a local school in September) and a scary mask from Target. I'd planned to dress Kiera as Cinderella, and had bought her a little costume, but when I was dressing the girls to go out, she balked at the Cinderella costume and wanted to wear a pink fairy dress instead. We put it on over a thin fleece pullover with a hood, and then over both dress and pullover we put another fleece jacket, unzipped. It was surprisingly stylish. Molly dressed in layers as well, though a ghost costume will hide even a heavy coat.
Kiera didn't have a clear understanding of what was going to happen tonight. I came out to meet them as they got home, though, and Kiera hefted her nearly-full plastic pumpkin and announced, "Mama! I GOT CANDY!"
The generosity and enthusiasm of my neighborhood always amazes me. Someone on the block gives away full-sized candy bars. Nearly everyone gives away mini candy bars -- I went through the candy afterwards to pull out choking hazards and found none of those nasty orange and black toffee things I never ate as a kid. The kids who came to the door all said thank you and wished me a happy Halloween. I love seeing kids in costume. Seeing the parents in costume is also fun. One of the dads out with kids tonight was dressed as Darth Vader.
We carved two jack-o-lanterns this year -- one yesterday, and one today. I have discovered that if you buy the specialized tools (readily available for a couple of bucks at grocery stores) -- the really tiny, slender serrated knife, and the plastic scraper -- a task I remembered as arduous and exhausting becomes pretty easy and fun. Molly is a bit young to use the knife, so I let her instruct me on the design. I also picked up a Mr. Potato Head set that's designed to be stuck into a pumpkin, and Molly did that yesterday -- that actually attracted a lot of attention, I saw lots of kids pointing it out to each other as they left.
There's so much to like about Halloween. I think my favorite thing is the way it brings communities together. I also like the pleasure it brings to little kids, while being so much simpler than Christmas. All you need to do Halloween properly is a costume for each kid, and candy to give away -- everything else is optional.
As a bonus, the open paganism totally enrages certain stick-where-the-sun-don't-shine fundamentalist crackpots who for whatever reason aren't bothered by egg-laying bunnies or decorated evergreens. (I can easily do a Christian reading of Halloween, with far less convolutions than any explanation I've seen for what bunnies have to do with the Resurrection.)
We let the girls have a couple of pieces of candy on Halloween night, and then dole it out a piece at a time for dessert. It's going to last for months.
The haunted house brings kids to our block from all the nearby blocks; we always have a lot of trick-or-treaters, and this year was no exception. I gave away about 130 pieces of candy, though until 7 p.m. we were giving away two at a time.
Molly dressed as a ghost, using a white tablecloth I picked up at the Arena Sale (a huge rummage sale held by a local school in September) and a scary mask from Target. I'd planned to dress Kiera as Cinderella, and had bought her a little costume, but when I was dressing the girls to go out, she balked at the Cinderella costume and wanted to wear a pink fairy dress instead. We put it on over a thin fleece pullover with a hood, and then over both dress and pullover we put another fleece jacket, unzipped. It was surprisingly stylish. Molly dressed in layers as well, though a ghost costume will hide even a heavy coat.
Kiera didn't have a clear understanding of what was going to happen tonight. I came out to meet them as they got home, though, and Kiera hefted her nearly-full plastic pumpkin and announced, "Mama! I GOT CANDY!"
The generosity and enthusiasm of my neighborhood always amazes me. Someone on the block gives away full-sized candy bars. Nearly everyone gives away mini candy bars -- I went through the candy afterwards to pull out choking hazards and found none of those nasty orange and black toffee things I never ate as a kid. The kids who came to the door all said thank you and wished me a happy Halloween. I love seeing kids in costume. Seeing the parents in costume is also fun. One of the dads out with kids tonight was dressed as Darth Vader.
We carved two jack-o-lanterns this year -- one yesterday, and one today. I have discovered that if you buy the specialized tools (readily available for a couple of bucks at grocery stores) -- the really tiny, slender serrated knife, and the plastic scraper -- a task I remembered as arduous and exhausting becomes pretty easy and fun. Molly is a bit young to use the knife, so I let her instruct me on the design. I also picked up a Mr. Potato Head set that's designed to be stuck into a pumpkin, and Molly did that yesterday -- that actually attracted a lot of attention, I saw lots of kids pointing it out to each other as they left.
There's so much to like about Halloween. I think my favorite thing is the way it brings communities together. I also like the pleasure it brings to little kids, while being so much simpler than Christmas. All you need to do Halloween properly is a costume for each kid, and candy to give away -- everything else is optional.
As a bonus, the open paganism totally enrages certain stick-where-the-sun-don't-shine fundamentalist crackpots who for whatever reason aren't bothered by egg-laying bunnies or decorated evergreens. (I can easily do a Christian reading of Halloween, with far less convolutions than any explanation I've seen for what bunnies have to do with the Resurrection.)
We let the girls have a couple of pieces of candy on Halloween night, and then dole it out a piece at a time for dessert. It's going to last for months.
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no subject
Date: 2005-11-01 08:17 pm (UTC)And the rage of fundies just makes it all the more fun for me.
no subject
Date: 2005-11-01 09:03 pm (UTC)Ah, that was the funniest thing I've read this week :-)
From that article's initial windup about "Non-Annie Day", I was guessing it was written by, um, a Wiccan perhaps? (I figured maybe you had accidentally linked to a different article? Or maybe I should be anticipating some clever rhetorical turnabout which would, um, perhaps *glorify* pagan holidays turned awry?)
Alas, no. Apparently the modern incarnation of Halloween is in fact a lingering historical holdover of [drum roll please] anti-Christian hatred. "Pffft, here's an author who typifies the process of 're-visioning' by which history can be created.", I thought.
On further consideration, though...
My current hypothesis is that maybe this author really does feel alienated and marginalized, threatened on all sides by a tide of pure evil steaming out of the seams of reality into the increasingly polluted souls of her neighbors and fellow citizens. Now I'm thinking, "Holy s**t, Batman, what must it be like to actually see the world from that viewpoint all the time? No wonder she might need God every morning with her Wheaties and every night before bed!"
I swear, every time I think "And now I've really seen it all." ...
no subject
Date: 2005-11-02 01:44 am (UTC)The metaphore is truly bizarre. A better metaphore would be this one: there's this big party that's held in town every year. One day, a new family moves into town. They are all invited to the party. They start attending, and come up with some new traditions that they want everyone else to participate in. Some people do, and some people don't. After a few years, some of the people in the family decide that since not EVERYBODY is participating in their fun new traditions, this means that the entire celebration is actually a conspiracy against them. They go off in a snit and refuse to come to the party. They also tell all their family members that if they go to the party, it's because they're disloyal to the disgruntled members of the family and bad, bad cousins who must not love them at all. Because after all, the whole point of this party is clearly to exclude them!
Meanwhile, everyone else in town gets together, wears costumes, enjoys candy, and wonders whether Annie's family needs a collective surgical stick-ectomy.
I actually don't have a problem with Christians who note that Halloween is a very pagan holiday (because, well, it is) and decline to participate, provided that they are consistent enough to eschew the Easter Bunny. If you present your children with a basket full of pagan fertility symbols on the holiday named after an Anglo-Saxon goddess, but whine about Halloween, well, I will hold you up as a prime example of why many people think that Fundamentalist Christians as a whole are just not very bright.