Halloween

Halloween is my absolute favorite holiday now that I have little kids. What fun to dress them up and take them to a myriad of activities, all done for the purpose of pumping sugar and happiness into kids. Sadly for us, the month of October was taken by illness, injury, and work. Still, we managed to dress up. Well, the kids. Not me. Maybe next year I'll convince B. to join me, and then we can be a family of Supers!

Some people think that Halloween is a pointless holiday. But that is what makes it so fun! No ulterior motives, no religious backdrop to limit its significance. Still, I disagree. Whatever Halloween has become in modern times, it can be legitimately appreciated.

It is a day in which we can make light of the things that scare us. Halloween brings out the monsters, ghosts, and demons for us to face. It trivializes our arachnophobia and lowers our apprehension about receiving candy from strangers. For one night, we can conceive Death as foolish. Our current pain is more tolerable when compared to the gory dramatizations of torture. We joke our way through haunted spaces, and our fear of being lost in a maze gets rationalized with an exit sign. We face our fears, we laugh at our mortality. After all, isn't laughter the way to end a boggart?

For all the scary things, Halloween is still a child-oriented holiday. How interesting the juxtaposition of the mature and haunted nature of the holiday with the given right to the raggamuffins to exploit their neighbors. Halloween does have children at its core yet, the holiday is also loved by adults. I sustain that it is still child-centered because Halloween calls on many an adult's inner child. Once a year, adults cease to be so, and return to the open ended thought of what to be. A world of care-free possibilities. That is the essence of childhood.

I also love Halloween for its All-American nature. Sure its beginnings come from various far-away regions and many other countries have had festivals addressing the dead for centuries (think Day of the Death). But there is nothing like an American Halloween!

When I was ten or eleven years old, on the eve of October 31st, a couple friends, my younger brother, and I decided to dress up for Halloween and go trick-or-treating. The night did not go so well. This was early 1990s in Mexico, and not a lot of people knew what we were doing. Of the neighbors that did know, few had candy, and most refused to give it. We were told to "be Mexican" and that "it was not our tradition and we should honor our dead instead." Of course, they were right. Halloween is an American holiday, much like 4th of July or Thanksgiving. To finally live here and experience Halloween is part of this American culture. I did not get the opportunity to experience trick-or-treating as a child, but as I am raising American boys, Halloween is bound to be a big deal in our household for many years to come.

One final thought of curiosity. In A Tree Grows in Brooklyn there is a bit of history detailed on the evolution of Halloween. In the beginning of the 20th Century, children in the City did not go trick-or-treating on the eve of October 31st, but rather on Thanksgiving. The poor children bought penny masks and trotted from storekeeper to storekeeper to demand their yearly bribe for future patronage and safe-keeping. This was also accompanied by the "raggamuffin parade." The tradition became distorted after the Depression and through the 1940s. By the 1960s, trick-or-treating had been adapted into the Halloween tradition, and the raggamuffin parade became the Thanksgiving parade. How fun is that!

Watch for the translation and pictures to be posted soon!