Trick or Treating

I can remember Trick or Treating as a child in the small town neighborhood where we lived with my grandparents. There was an old man who lived down the street who we kids knew as la barba, which is Italian for beard. He had a long gray beard which for, some reason, scared us. To my knowledge the man never did anything scary to anyone. Didn’t matter. There was no way we were going to his house to get the candy he was offering, instead keeping a wide birth around him as we visited the other homes.

I know there are a lot of people who don’t like Halloween either because of scary bearded strangers from their childhood or for other reasons, just as valid in their minds as my fear. One friend says she enjoys having little ones come to her door for candy, but is a little fearful when older kids wearing only masks ring the doorbell and then just stand there, not saying a word. It always scares her a little, “because I can’t see their faces,” she says, admitting that accounts for her dislike of clowns, too.

A lot of Halloween nay-sayers don’t like the focus on morbidity that Halloween has evolved into. Drive through your neighborhood and you will see lots of pumpkins and friendly scarecrows decorating lawns, but there will also be the occasional set of skeletal hands crawling from the earth, open coffins waiting for an inhabitant, and stuffed creatures hanging form tree limbs. It’s enough to give anyone pause and put your therapist on speed dial.

That aside, I still like Halloween, or at least my version of Halloween. I like to stay on the cutesy side of the holiday (see M&M photo above) and not delve too deeply into the darker side. I also like it because you can do as little or as much as you want to celebrate, unlike most other holidays. Buy a couple bags of candy and you are done. Or you can go the distance -- stringing orange lights on your porch; cutting open pumpkins and getting up to your elbows in pumpkin slime. And, it’s the one night in the year when you can be somebody else.

It’s harder to get as excited about Halloween, though, when there are no little ones around to use as an excuse for all this fun. I still look forward to Trick or Treaters coming to the door, but the number of them has slacked off in recent years. I still buy way too much candy, and hope that more costumed creatures will venture down to our cul-de-sac and visit for a little while. No beards here!

By Teresa K. Flatley

www.boomthis.com

10/07