Thankful for ... Halloween      

Thanksgiving is just around the corner. If the thought of place settings, basting and pie crust rolling turns your stomach a bit in nervous anticipation, then live in the even nearer future and focus on Halloween instead. What many think is a kid’s holiday can actually be great fun for adults as well.

If you think you’re too old to dress up, think again. In fact, many of us are already dressing up on a daily basis. How well does the daily suit and tie reflect your true personality? And how about that smart business ensemble with the pencil skirt and the shoes you wouldn’t wear anywhere but to work? It’s nary a nod to the wild child within.

I suggest that Halloween, while great fun for kids, has equally rabble rousing potential for us adults. And if kids are on your Halloween agenda, don’t let that stop you from a night of role playing. After all, how cool are the parents dressed up as devils, witches and goblins. Pull a punch from your younger years and get into the thick of spooky things.

I can hear it already: I don’t have time; I don’t have the money; I’m just not into all that. Fine, buzz‑kill. Just go ahead and sit there in your khakis and your golf shirt and leave the fun to us.

Halloween is one holiday where imagination reigns. I remember one year in grade school when my   family was short on funds but high on spirit. I concocted a costume out of a garbage pail, some yellow pants and some cardboard. I was a bottle of “Lupita’s Magical Mustard.” I wore some old, golden colored bell bottoms, a yellow shirt and in effect, a sandwich sign over my shoulders advertising the wonders of the mystical mustard. On my back was a list of ingredients: mustard seed, Champagne, toe of toad, tongue of tarantula, eye of elephant, liver of lizard, spleen of snake and yellow dye #431. On my head I wore, upside down, a yellow garbage pail for the top. I think this costume set me back all of five bucks. And it was fun  running around dressed up like a bottle of mustard. But the real treat was in the thought process and the act of creating it.

In this world of expected perfection we live in, Halloween is not exempt. People tend to either opt out if their costumes are not sublime, or give in and go for the purchased costumes, especially for their kids. Where is the love in that? Six‑year‑olds will play dress‑up all day long if you let them, but suddenly, at Halloween, they’re incapable of creating their own costumes? I don’t get it. Throw the idea of perfection into the wind and let those little minds, and your own, run around the house for some costume ideas. Who says a metal colander doesn’t make a great spaceman helmet? Who says tree branches don’t make great wings? More than a few sprites and fairies would argue with that sentiment.

Halloween has the potential to be, very nearly, the perfect family holiday. The focus is on almost everything but the food, place settings, flowers and wine. It’s about costumes and candy. Sure it isn’t deep. It isn’t religious. It isn’t patriotic. But because of a lack of rules, it is a virtual license to go all out and do whatever crazy and frightful things inspire you.

This is a holiday that asks for no giving of gifts—just a pumpkin or two, costumes and some candy. And although Halloween has become quite commercialized of late, with all the greeting cards and other store‑bought nonsense, there is still the opportunity to keep it real. Let candles and the jack‑o’‑lantern be your decoration of choice. Toast the pumpkin seeds and serve them over a salad. Rummage the depths of the closet for costume material and for goodness sakes inspire your children. Pretend you have no money to spend on a costume and encourage your children to create their own from household items.

I know when kids come to my front door on All Hallow’s Eve dressed in obviously homemade costumes, I offer high praise to them. It takes courage and creativity to design and make your own disguise and wear it. On the other hand, I’ve always felt a bit of pity for the children who show up in plastic masks and tied‑on, store‑bought costumes. No one sat with them for hours at the dinner table trying to make an astronaut costume from common household items. Anyone can, and most do, run into the local drug store and pluck a mass‑produced abomination from the rack of thousands just like it.