I'm not sure what we have planned for Halloween. We were supposed to make an in-costume visit to a nursing home with our 4-H Club this morning, then Sophia was having some friends over for a party, and then they were all moving on to the house of one of the friends to go trick or treating. She lives in a neighborhood with better sidewalks and better street lights!
However, Sophia just went back to school yesterday after three days off and I heard her coughing in the night so I've cancelled the nursing home visit and the rest of the day is a bit up in the air. I'm letting her sleep as long as she can and I'll see what she feels like when she wakes up.
Meanwhile, let's chat about Halloween. Do you celebrate or, I should say, observe? Halloween was a big part of my childhood. Let's face it, it was safe back then. You didn't have to worry about random acts of senseless violence, idiots who lace candy with drugs, or pedophiles who no doubt view Halloween as a shopping day. Wow, little children and costumes, what fun! Sick.
Halloween was all about wearing innocent cartoon character costumes and going from door to door with our plastic pumpkins crying "Trick or Treat" while adults oohed and aahed over how cute we were. No eating candy while we were out; it all had to be brought home and dumped on the dining room table whereupon all homemade items were promptly discarded. How sad is that? Someone probably worked for hours on those cookies, candied apples, popcorn balls, etc. and they ended up in the trashcan. Even then, according to my Mum, you can't be too careful. Not sure what she thought some octogenarian might have put in her popcorn ball!
My Halloween memories include wearing your costume to school and trick or treating down the school hallway where all the teachers had goodies to hand out. Good grief, does anyone still do that? You'd have to have a peanut-free hallway, or a gluten-free hallway, or whatever else to accommodate the myriad of allergies kids have these days.
Anyway, fast forward to Sophia's era. The first few years were ok - they still did the costume thing at school but the neighborhood trick or treating became less desirable. Too many teenagers in scary costumes guaranteed to give a five year old nightmares. Along came the trick or treating at the mall idea. Sort of reminded me of the school hallway idea. We did that for a few years.
Then we started going to church regularly and replaced the Halloween idea with a Harvest theme. We'd never really had any scary decorations - lots of angelic looking witches and devils was more our speed but we tossed them out in favor of equally-angelic looking scarecrows and pumpkins and wheat sheaves. No wearing costumes at the Christian school Sophia attended and Halloween was pretty much put to bed.
Not that I didn't miss it. I had such great memories of the Halloweens of my childhood that I couldn't help but feel a bit cheated. So here we are, after years of not observing Halloween, planning to have a party and let Sophia go trick or treating. I'm not even sure you can consider the get-together of her girlfriends as a Halloween party. Yes, they are supposed to come dressed in costume, but I don't have any decorations. The whole thing was thrown together at the last minute and I'll be darned if I'm going to spend money and run around like a madwoman to decorate! They will sing and dance and probably watch a scary movie or two (although their idea of a scary movie usually has a hot-bodied teenage boy as the hero - how scary can that be?) and then devour pizza and french fries. Then they will head off to go trick or treating. Do you think I can get away with following along at a discreet distance? I'm still not 100% in favor of the whole idea.
It took me forever to find a suitable costume for Sophia to wear. When did Halloween become so sexy? A trip to the local costume shop left me positively blushing. I think Costume Shop is the wrong name, "Sluts 'R Us" would be more appropriate. I could chose from the sexy nurse, the sexy tavern wench, the sexy devil, witch, you name it...even Target's packaging for its costumes had the 38DDD model busting out of her outfit. What's with the necklines down to here and the hemlines up to here? I finally settled on a flapper at Wal Mart (and I loathe shopping at Wal Mart). At least the neckline and hemline are modest.
I can't close this post without including a couple of my most cherished memories of Halloween. Number one has to be "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown". I LOVE this movie. I have actually just purchased, from a secondhand dealer, a copy of the Peanuts Cookbook that I bought back in 1970. It was on one of those Scholastic Book Order Forms that the kids bring home from school - I was in the fourth grade. The book has the recipe for Charlie Brown's Great Pumpkin Cookies and they are so delicious. So, at some point today, I'll be curled up with the Peanuts gang and one of the yummy cookies while I take a wander down memory lane.
My other memory has to be anything to do with Disney, especially Winnie the Pooh. I planned a Disney Halloween party for my Brownie Troop one year and it was a great success. The Disney Store really does have the coolest Halloween stuff - costumes and decorations - if you're willing to take out a second mortgage. We were on a tight budget back then so I think I must have shopped the sales for a couple of years until I had gathered enough stuff to throw a party. We had Winnie and Piglet beanies that you had to throw into a plastic pumpkin, all Seven Dwarf beanies that you had to name, international Mickey and Minnie beanies whose country of origin had to be identified, and some other Winnie the Pooh matching game. Vic dressed up as Grumpy and Sophia and I were Mom and Me Maleficents! It was a blast!
So whatever you plan to do today and tonight, have fun and be safe!
