It was a good thing that I never understood the true meaning of Halloween when I was young. The Celts believed that Halloween Eve saw the veil between the living and the dead become thin and they wore costumes to hide from evil spirits (or people they didn’t want to see!).
So, my brothers and I would gather various items from the house to make our costumes. I’m the one on the left. Don’t say a word about the cat glasses! The sombrero came from Expo ’67, the gun and holster were “borrowed” from my brother, and the sash was from my mother. The mustache? Trade secret 😉.
We would wait for our friends and go to the homes that we knew had the best candy. There was always that one home with the lights off that looked cold and uninviting, right next to the yard filled with skeletons and huge cobwebs! In my day, it was pretty much safe for us to roam in a pack without our parents. And when we were satisfied that we couldn’t fit another piece in our pillow cases (we were hard core) or carry it much further, we headed home. We poured out our bags on the kitchen table and each of us got to choose one thing that night. No sugar rushes in our house. And mom and dad picked something as well. Then, we separated the goodies into piles: chocolate bars, gum, lollipops, Popeye cigarettes, candy corn (which we threw straight into the garbage as no one in the house liked them), small bags of chips (we prized those and usually put them in our lunches the next day), and apples (back in the days before we had to worry about them).
As I became a parent, things changed. We live in the country(ish) and there was no door-to-door here. But a local town would close off the main road and let the kids free for a few hours. They would dash from business to home on both sides, running back to us if their bags got too heavy. We’d empty them into a large pillow case (some things never change), and off they would go again. They would run into friends and head into the library where they hosted a haunted house, and then they would always come to inform us that they hadn’t been scared. Even when a brother ratted them out for screaming.
There was always a weather element to any Halloween night in those days. Would the kids have to wear snowsuits under their costumes or just rain gear? They didn’t mind, too much. The one year my eldest was a mummy, wrapped in strips of old white bedsheets, tied together with knots or safety pins, was a good one. He sat in the back seat, still as a … well, a mummy, and by the end of the night he was falling apart.
Your Turn:
- What do you remember about the costumes you wore? Did you buy from stores or put them together yourself? What was your favorite costume?
- Did you go out as a family, or with friends, and did you have free reign in your neighborhood?
- Did you cut out pumpkins and place them outside with candles in their husked bellies to light up the faces you had created? Who helped you? Do you remember the feel of pumpkin guts between your fingers?
- Did you bake the pumpkin seeds and eat them?
- What was your favorite type of candy to get? Were you allowed to eat a lot that night?
- Were there any parties that you went to as you got older? What do you remember about them?
- How did you treat Halloween when you became a parent? Did you want to give your children the same feeling as you had (or better)?
- Find some pictures of the costumes you had over the years (show them to your kids!).