My real problem with Halloween has to do with the costumes. And the decorations. And the staying up late on a school night to go running around the neighborhood begging for dessert. I don’t need a bloody, mangled rubber hand in my house. Not at Halloween and not ever. I don’t care for plastic skeleton heads hanging from windows and I definitely don’t like fake witches with warty faces playing spooky music. I’m a pumpkin and mum kind of girl. Maybe a hay bale or two on the front porch with some cute scarecrows smiling out at the world, happy to be enjoying the crisp fall weather and the smell of burning leaves in the air. Instead, there are inflatable spiders the size of my car sitting in the yard across the street.
My children love Halloween. God has a sense of humor like that, doesn’t he? My kids will pore over the catalogs that start arriving in the mail the day after school starts, searching for the perfect costumes and the best decorations for our house. Their top pick in the decorations department this year? A bag of rats. Not one rat people. An entire bag. Of rats. They actually asked me to shell out good money to purchase this particular decoration. It’s the middle of October and I’m still holding out for the bag of rats “to go on sale.” Because then I’m going to buy them. Wink, wink.
Last year, we hosted a Halloween party I had absolutely no intention of hosting. My kids began talking about the party we were going to have the moment October rolled around. I kept listening and nodding my head, telling them what great ideas they had and then quickly changing the subject. When October 20th arrived and my children had made a guest list, created handmade invitations, and planned both the party menu and entertainment, I figured there was no way out of it. I played along with their fun and we hosted a gaggle of kids in costumes for a fabulous little soirée in our backyard. There was pizza and candy and even a haunted trail. There were no inflatable spiders.
This year, my eight-year-old son decided to break tradition when it came to his Halloween costume. In the past, he has allowed me to persuade him to wear what I wanted him to wear, usually something that turned him and his little sister into a matching pair. They have been Minnie and Mickey Mouse, a cowboy and cowgirl. You get the drift. This year, my son was determined to have a scary costume. And by scary, he meant completely and totally inappropriate for a child.
I asked around for advice on the costume dilemma and my friends had some stellar ideas.
“Show your son three costumes you approve of and let him choose the one he likes best.”
“Explain to your son that you don’t want his costume to be so scary he frightens his little sister and any other small children he might run into while trick-or-treating.”
“Tell your son you tried to order the scary costume he wanted but, what a bummer, it was sold out.”
That last one was my personal favorite. It was a win, win – he didn’t get the scary costume and it wasn’t my fault.
I think my real problem with Halloween is that it exposes my children to the fact that there is a dark side to this world we live in. It might not come in the form of ghosts and goblins, but evil does exist. I realize scary costumes don’t automatically inform children about crime and rape and murder, but costumes that include fake blood and sharp accessories, and which have names like grim reaper, evil phantom, gothic vampire, crypt master, psycho clown, and wicked werewolf bring up terms I’m not ready to discuss with my eight year old. And how do you explain the fact that we teach our kids not to eat any candy they get while trick-or-treating until after we have inspected every piece to make sure it’s “safe.” One of my strongest memories of Halloween involves my parents teaching me this same rule. It was how I learned there were people in the world who might intentionally want to hurt children. That’s a big lesson in the life of a child. A necessary lesson, no doubt, but one that is life-changing.
Our family will celebrate Halloween on October 31st along with everyone else. We have made our annual trek to the local pumpkin patch in search of the perfect pumpkins, one for each child, and there was a great deal of photography involved in the outing. We will carve our pumpkins into jack-o-lanterns on Halloween Eve while the seeds roast in the oven. Orange and black decorations sit out around our house and the kids’ costumes are hanging in their closets ready for a big night of trick-or-treating. I was able to talk my son out of his first choice costume with honesty. I told him I didn’t think it was appropriate for an eight year old and he had to choose something else. He was mad at first. I even got the ol’ “I’m not going to dress up as anything” line for a few days, complete with a very smug look. Eventually, my son came around. It might have had something to do with the fact that I told him children without costumes wouldn’t be trick-or-treating on my watch, but either way, we went online and found a costume my son loved. He’s going to be a warlock. I have absolutely no idea what a warlock is and, frankly, I don’t think my son does either. Basically, the costume looks like a wizard from Harry Potter, which is okay with me. There is no blood, no suggestion of death. I suppose a warlock is some sort of human like creature who performs magic spells.
You know . . . I wouldn’t mind being a warlock myself. I could perform all kinds of amazing magic spells. I could make the scary costumes and decorations disappear. I could turn the lollipops and gumballs into Butterfingers and Milky Ways. I could make the blow up spiders vanish into thin air.
Most importantly, I could make my son’s innocence last just a little bit longer.
HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!
