Tag Archives: Halloween

Another week of Halloween in the books

When I was a kid, Halloween was one day. You had a party at school. If you were lucky, it was a year when the school staff were feeling ambitious, which meant an assembly with a costume parade. That night, you went trick or treating for an hour. If you had a complicated costume, you didn’t take it off between school and trick or treating.

Nowadays, Halloween lasts at least a week. Every little business district and mall has its own trick or treat night. There are special events, all over town, for kids to get dressed up and load up with loot. My boys trick or treat where I work. It’s like March Madness for little goblins.

If you’ve read my thoughts on kids’ birthday parties, you’re all ready for me to go into a cranky-old-man rant about this. Well, the trick’s on you, because I’m not. Mostly, I’m not. The cranky old man in me will not go completely silent into that good night, but I have tranquilized him for this one.

I like expanded Halloween. Those of you who are handy and creative put a lot of time and thought into making your kids’ costumes. The rest of us put money into it. It’s a shame to have all of that time, thought, and treasure spent on one or two wearings of the costume.

Cheeze-Its, it's the cops

Any excuse necessary to slap Daddy into handcuffs.

I like seeing all the creativity that went into the costumes. If I’m only taking the boys out trick or treating on Halloween, I don’t get to see much of this, as we tend to fall in with the same group throughout the night. And if it happens to be snowing, like it was this year, all the costumes are hidden under winter coats anyway.

At the other events is where I see all the diverse ideas that would never have occurred to me, and I couldn’t make into reality anyway. I like creativity on display, and there’s no time when you get to witness it quite like during the Halloween season.

Smiling warrior

Our little soldier boy.

Also, I like candy, which is the foremost reason I’ve taught my children to share. The more events they go to, the more candy they get, and the bigger my cut. Sharing means caring, boys; now fork it over.

Nothing is perfect though, and if the cranky old man could pull the duct tape off, he’d tell you that I don’t care for the on-the-run dinners or the missed bed times that all this Halloween running around creates. Least of all do I enjoy the events where the boys trudge around in long lines, in the cold, and end up with a handful of those tiny Tootsie Rolls to show for it. They won’t miss the candy, but kids can tell when you’re phoning it in.

I’m content with what Halloween has become. This does not mean I’d like to see other “holidays” blow up like this. I don’t need a bloated Valentine’s Day. For one thing, the candy’s not as good.

Crabby duck

Three out of three children have hated this costume.

If the frog’s happy, I’m happy

If you secretly resent those crafty parents who can effortlessly sew together adorable Halloween costumes for all their kids, then you have no reason to resent my wife and me. All of our skill at producing cute costumes comes at a bargain price from a discount store.

I have created many of my own costumes for Halloween parties over the years, but my creations have been more conceptual. One year, I was a window. Another time, I did Halloween as part of this complete breakfast. I got a lot of hungry looks from squirrels that night.

Angry owl

The Angry Owl. If I were an animal who regularly coughed up balls of mouse hair and bones, I’d be angry too.

Kids’ costumes are supposed to be cute and, more or less, easily identifiable. If this weren’t enough of a stake in my creative heart, they are not supposed to be even slightly dangerous. I was never able to guarantee that the costumes I’d made for myself wouldn’t accidentally poke somebody in the eye. That’s not really a selling point at a kids’ party.

My wife and I aren’t very artistically talented, if you take away the part of art that is left to the beholder’s imagination. Consequently, my wife spends part of October shopping for boys’ Halloween costumes.

The big boy decides what he wants to be on his own. Last year, Halloween coincided with his skunk phase. All boys go through a skunk phase, right? This year, he’ll be a soldier. He’s known this for at least six months. Easy.

A frog's OK I guess

The Ambivalent Frog. The good news is he isn’t an owl. The bad news: Do owls eat frogs?

The little boy is another story. Finding an appropriate costume for a toddler can be an adventure. Of course, it must be cute. But it also must not make him topple over at every step. Most importantly, it must not induce him into a screaming fit every time it comes near him. Nobody is cute wearing a screaming fit.

After much browsing, Mommy and Toddler narrowed down the candidates to three. The pumpkin costume had the advantage of being inexpensive, but it didn’t quite ring the bell on the cuteness scale. The owl had the potential to be very cute, but sometimes a little boy just doesn’t want to be an owl. The owl was presented to him on two separate occasions, resulting in two separate screaming fits. With regret, Mommy crossed the owl off the list.

The frog is definitely cute. The boy let himself be clothed in frog with only a mild look of reservation. Whether or not the frog will make him topple over at every step remains to be seen. But after the owl experience, we’ll find a way to live with that.

This Halloween, if you see a tired, prematurely aged man carrying an adorable frog on his shoulders, you’ll know who they are. Yes, the man may appear to be wilting under the weight, but rest assured, so long as the frog is not screaming and crying, that little old man is perfectly content.

Happy Thanksgiving, now let’s talk about Christmas

One Saturday in the middle of October, the four-year-old came downstairs as I was making breakfast. He still wore his pajamas and had a groggy look about him. He stepped into the kitchen and, without troubling himself with the exchange of any top-of-the-morning niceties, asked. “Is it Thanksgiving?”

He was disappointed to learn that it was not. His disappointment stemmed, not from a particular childlike love of the thrill-devoid holiday known as Thanksgiving, but from a recently gained knowledge that Thanksgiving was an obstacle that must necessarily be removed from the way if Christmas were ever to come.

A couple of weeks before, I had explained to him that we would have Halloween first, followed by Thanksgiving. Then, it would get to be winter and Christmas would come. I can only attribute the fact that he forgot all about Halloween to the early hour of day, his sleepy disposition, and the proven fact that toys are more exciting than candy.

Well, if it weren’t even Thanksgiving yet, there was still time to go brush his teeth.

Today, I have good news for the boy, because now it is Thanksgiving, and that is practically the doorstep of Christmas. Winter is such an unreliable arrival that it is hardly worth counting, which means Christmas is up next.

Halloween

Thanksgiving

→Christmas!!!!←

All the lesser holidays are out of the way! Christmas is almost here! So let’s put this turkey to bed and start the countdown!

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

P.S. I’m not telling him it’s Thanksgiving until after he brushes his teeth.

November calendar

Only one more page to go!

“Trick-or-Character Development” – Halloween makes us better men

Another Halloween has come and gone, and my son and I are both better men for it. It was not the best weather we’ve ever had, but it could have been worse. There was a light mist in the air and it was pretty chilly. Considering what others were going through this Halloween, we felt fortunate to be able to trick-or-treat at all.

I’m glad we got to go, because it gave us both a chance to demonstrate how much we’ve grown since last year.

This year we took two friends along with us: a six-year-old and a two-year-old (the baby stayed home to pass out candy with mom). Nothing makes you more aware of the differences between a first-grader, a preschooler, and a toddler than trying to take such a motley crew from house to house in the dark.

The two older kids forgot all about the toddler and I as soon as they got out the door. I’ve been chasing a preschooler around so long, I’ve forgotten how slowly two-year-olds run. If I had a candy bar for every time I had to yell, “Wait for us!” I’d have, well, about as much candy as we now have in the house.

skunk boy ready to go

We’re ready to go out and get that candy! This year, we might even say “Trick or Treat” at some doors, not because we like saying it, because we’re more mature now and we know it’s the right thing to do.

By the time I’d realized my folly in not bringing a wagon, we were too far into the jungle of houses to go back. The big kids didn’t want to slow down and the little kid couldn’t speed up. Guess what slow-witted adult got to carry her. Two-year-olds are much heavier than babies; seems like I’ve forgotten a lot about two-year-olds.

There should be some kind of consortium where children can be brought in and redistributed to trick-or-treating chaperons by age, so that one adult doesn’t have to try to keep track of several children spread out over a block of houses – but mostly so no aging parent has to wake up on All Saints Day with an aching back.

We finally looped around to where we could drop off the toddler at home and then get some serious trick-or-treating done. When my son saw the welcoming lights of home, he decided he was getting a little tired too. The six-year-old would have gone longer, but not without his friends. Our night was over.

Lest you think the night was a disappointment, here is the good news. We quit with an entire hour left to trick-or-treat, and I didn’t even put up any stink about it. I didn’t give anybody any flak about being soft; I didn’t act like a greedy, Type A, German Virgo at all. Now, you might chalk this up to sore arms or cold hands, but I call it spiritual growth.

And the news gets even better. My son willingly said, “Trick-or-Treat” at half of the houses we went to. He didn’t even make it sound like he was only saying it to avoid receiving an electric shock or some such punishment. He said it almost nearly like he meant it.

All in all, it was great night for our family. I hope someone is holding onto these moments because it’s true: we grow up so fast.