Dear Child,
I’ve never really liked Halloween. Even as a kid.
I loved the candy part for sure, but I’ve never liked anything scary or gross, so for me, Halloween was awful.
I don’t think I was even that crazy about the dressing up part when I was a kid, but trick or treating was fun, so long as you could just say “trick or treat” and be given candy. But sometimes we’d knock on the door of someone who wanted to know your name, or who your parents were. I guess that happens when you grow up just outside of a small village. And I know at one house in particular, if they knew your parents, you’d be given a candy apple instead of their regular candy. We made sure Mom came close enough to the door there, so they would know exactly who we were.
All of the sitcoms we would watch in the evenings back then would air their “Halloween Specials” the week before Halloween and I didn’t like that at all. I was always so happy to see Halloween over.
When you and your brother came along, Halloween became fun. It was much tamer for little ones and I enjoyed finding costumes and taking you trick or treating. I looked forward to carving pumpkins too.
The first time you went trick-or-treating, you were only one year old. I borrowed a puppy costume from a guy I worked with at Napa and we went into Perth and met up at a friend’s house. We only trick or treated on the street behind her house, as that was more than enough candy to fill your little Halloween bucket. We had practiced a lot for this night and you did great. You never went farther than the door and you always said thank you. I think you were having so much fun that you didn’t realize they were putting candy into your bucket until after about six houses, and then you plopped yourself down at the end of someone’s driveway and started pulling everything back out of the bucket to take a look at what you got. Then we went over to Grandma’s house. She opened the door, you said trick or treat and she gave you a huge bag of cheezies. Definitely did not fit in your bucket.
One of my favourite Halloweens was in 2002. You were four years old and you wanted to be Cinderella. I decided to make our costumes that year, so in September I went to the craft store and found a pattern and bought all of the material I’d need. It was a huge undertaking as I had only ever made one dress before that. I took over one end of our kitchen table for two months and worked every evening on it.
Colton was obsessed at the time with his little six-shooter and it became obvious that no matter what costume he wore, he was also planning on wearing his gun belt and bringing his hand gun along. Luckily, he agreed to be a cowboy so the gun could be part of the costume. I made him a black vest and a red bandana and he borrowed my cowboy hat. Handsomest little cowboy I’d ever seen. We went into Aunt Lisa’s that year and trick or treated in the subdivision behind her house, along with Brittany, and Debbie and her kids. It was a lot of fun.
Another Halloween that ended up being a favourite was years later. I think you were thirteen and Colton was eleven. Colton didn’t really like Halloween either. Even when he was small, he would make us skip the houses that were overly decorated since it was likely they had someone dressed up who would jump out and scare him. I remember more than once, saying loudly as we walked up the driveway, “It’s okay, bud, just a lot of great decorations, don’t be scared.” Hoping that would alert anyone hiding not to jump out at him. It seemed to work well, as we remained unscathed.
This year I had decided you were old enough to go out with your friends in town, without me. You, for some crazy reason, love Halloween. Colton and I needed something to do. And then we came up with the best idea ever. We would put up the Christmas tree and watch his favourite Christmas movie “Christmas comes to Willow Creek” (starring John Schneider and Tom Wopat from the Dukes of Hazzard). The movie played in the background as we decorated the tree and then we sat down, cuddled up and watched the rest of the movie while we snacked on a box of little Halloween chocolate bars I’d purchased for us. I remember you coming home, super excited about the fun you’d had, showing us your own bag of candy.
And now I’m back to trick or treating with Alyssa and Keenan. Neither of them like things that are scary or gross either, but they both love dressing up and collecting candy. Once again, I am going over the important points of saying “Trick or Treat”, never going farther than the door, and always saying thank you.
Kindness always….especially when people are gracious enough to buy candy and then open their doors to just hand it out to anyone willing to put on a costume.
What a weird custom. 😊
Love Mom
xoxo
