I know at least a few ATAT readers weren't allowed to celebrate the Devil's Holiday growing up, like me. I remember being sent to bed early that night every year. We usually had an hour between when we went to our rooms and had to turn the lights off, and my siblings and I were all big readers at that age (my brother and I still are). But on Halloween night, we had to turn all the lights in the house off early, to discourage trick-or-treaters. Of course, that never worked and some huge mob of kids would stand outside, ringing the doorbell and caroling "Trick or treat!"
"Get back, Satan!" I screamed through the screen of my bedroom window. "We don't have any candy and we don't want you!" That was honestly the most fun part about Halloween the way my family did it - yelling at the heathen kids.
We moved to Iowa when I was in 4th grade, so that was my first time trick-or-treating. Since we had no friends, it was just me and my sister, on a street with a bunch of poor grad students who hadn't thought to buy a bowl of frigging candy, or else were out getting sloshed somewhere. By the time we got back to Florida's warm weather (it's in the 80s today, y'all) I was too old to run around begging for candy, and too young to do much else.
About 8 years back I discovered the Sacred Grounds costume party. I don't know that it's as big an affair now as it was when the coffeehouse had more business a couple years ago, but it was fantastic. Everyone goes all out. I've seen everything from a black man dressed as a KKK member, to a lesbian Harry Potter, to the most-convincing all-night performance of Anna Nicole Smith I ever want to see. (Seriously, after the first two hours no one wanted him to be so in character anymore.)
This is the first year Little Man is old enough to really "get" Halloween. He's been talking the vocab words from school for weeks - pumpkin, bat, Halloween, trick-or-treat, and scary. We carved my first-ever pumpkin a couple weeks ago, which means it's already rotted and been tossed. (How was I supposed to know? It's not like my parents ever carved a pumpkin with me.) I hid his costume two weeks ago after he refused to change out of it for a dirty pull-ups change without tears and recriminations. (He calls it his "zupa zuit" or "super suit". So cute.)
I'm really jazzed about tonight. I'm just wearing a pumpkin t-shirt with some big old purple fairy wings because an actual costume sounds like too much fun if I gotta pull the big red wagon of preschooler and candy all night :) Two years ago Little Man was Captain Hook and it was adorable - he still had Shirley Temple ringlets at the time, and the little tiny frock coat was perfect. But between the giant feathered hat, the lace cuffs on the frock coat, and the hook-hand it was way too much for him to hold onto. (He loved the hat though.) This year Little Man is dressed as Buzz Lightyear in a really simple lightweight non-flammable one piece.
Be safe, be comfortable, have fun. And remember, too much candy gonna make you sick.
*Child pictured is a model, not Little Man. LM is cuter, but you'll just have to take my word for it.
