My Love/Hate Relationship With Halloween

I guess Love/Hate is a little strong...the title should really be My Like/Dislike Relationship with Halloween. It's the time of year for super-cute pumpkins and scarecrows and carnivals and easy crafts to do with my kids.  And I've always loved putting together costumes with things we find around the house.

How did my children get so good at posing on command?

"Maybe I will kiss him, or maybe I will hit him with my frying pan..."

 So we did it big this year: A few pumpkin patch visits...

The boys went on these bungee cord trampolines--oh my goodness, the attendant made Evan fly so high I thought his eyeballs were going to fall out in terror!

Annie entered (and won!) her first costume contest.  I was the total stage mom who whispered in her ear to do a cute dance right before she went on stage. 

Sizing up the competition...

Following mom's "advice"

Victory!

And hey, the free carnival ride tickets were totally worth it!

We watched the costume parade at Sam and Evan's school:

Hangin' out between a vampire and a banana, but it's cool cuz I got my hammer...

Sorry, Wylie, there's a new girl in Evan's life and she likes super heroes, too!

I made an appearance at both boys' class parties, mostly to spy on them by pretending to help.

The Halloween Parties at school were a showcase of Pinterest ideas and were quite extravagant in true OC style.  I'm glad I didn't sign up to be room mom!

Mummy juice boxes

On the night of Halloween, Sam and I made a little carnival on our driveway...it was mostly a box maze, but we also had bobbing for donuts and a ring toss.  It was awesome, but since we weren't giving out full-sized candy bars and soda, the neighbors went elsewhere.  It's serious business around here, people!

We got all these yummy-smelling boxes and decorations out of the Pier One dumpsters

This is the part when I wore my prom dress and almost got a black eye on Halloween night.  I'll show it to you again in slow motion...

So what bothers me about Halloween isn't so much the witch costumes or sugar-overloading, it's that Halloween is the one time of year that people are willing to "talk" about death...but only in a total joking way, which isn't really talking about it at all.  In America, so many of us are sheltered from death and yet as far as I know, Halloween is mostly an American holiday (though other countries mimic our festivities--as I learned with sadness when I went to a Halloween party in Kazakhstan dressed as a cowgirl and bringing apples to bob for and pumpkins to carve, only to be greeted with seances, chanting, witches, and a mock funeral...no happy scarecrows or hay-bale mazes, just darkness...and the awkwardness of them not knowing why on earth I would show up to my own culture's holiday party in such a strange and inappropriate outfit). So we go all-out and say that it's funny and just for fun, but no one wants to have their mortality or spirituality discussed on any other day of the year.  In fact, the school only has a "Winter Party" on the calendar for December in order to avoid making anyone uncomfortable, but my kid sat next to the devil, a vampire, and a banana on a whole school day given over to Halloween revelry.  (The banana wasn't really offensive, I just put it in there).

(You'll have to "forgive" my overuse of "quotations" in this post.  I am turning back into a "Valley Girl", you know.)

So, I guess I decided this year to have fun and participate in the parts of Halloween I like and to hope that somehow in the midst of all the sugar and fake blood and mock horror, people would actually contemplate the delicate nature of life and what comes after.  I hope Samuel's (and my) little carnival was a spot of light, warmth, and hospitality in our neighborhood...just as we hope to be every other day of the year as well.