It's September 30th, so I'm Preemptively Ranting about Halloween

I love Halloween. I love pumpkins, I love costumes, I love all the candy the kids don't like that I get to eat.

I hate shopping for costumes, on line and in stores.  I really hate it with children.

Why?  Because the stores all sell the same thing, and worse, they have the obligatory creepy bloody display which terrifies my younger kids, grosses out the older ones and ensures I lose sleep because somebody has nightmares.

So Sherry you're thinking, go to the online stores, but even that's risky.  Why?  The webpages can't resist having sidebar costumes wildly inappropriate for everyone.  

I'm going to get asked about the Adam and Eve costumes, or the Sexy Pickachu Costume or the Bloody Daniel Tiger Costume, I'll get asked why there are 15 million girl costumes and ten options for boys.  I'll get asked why every boy must be a superhero or a ninja or a superhero ninja, and why every girl costume has  v-neck and/or is pink and sparkly.   Some of these questions will be from teens who need further clarification, some will be from kids who feel bewildered by the become a skeevy Carny for Halloween pitch, and worst of all, will be the kids who don't know why something is wrong, and want "that costume."

It's almost enough to make me learn to sew.

But not quite enough, so I tried typing in some qualified searches, but the word Innocent with costumes...doesn't work well.  I was very grateful no children saw the results.    I'm rather scared to research what chaste+costumes might conjure.  You can find decent stuff with children+costume.  I don't need my kids to dress up as saints or people from the old testament or Veggie Tales or even Lord of the Rings, but I would like a policewoman to look like a policewoman and not a pole dancer, and Batgirl, a personal favorite, to not require my daughter have hit the gym more than Barbara Gordon.   Every costume is a skin tight catsuit.  It's just the colors of the sequins that vary.

That sewing needle is mocking me.  I can hear it from its lonely former cookie tin, lost amongst extra buttons and thread.  

Wonder if I can convince any of them to be old fashioned ghosts?  I've got some extra sheets we could use.

Next Year's Halloween Makeover

I used to love Halloween. I loved the costumes. I loved the candy. I loved the decorations. Then, like everything else I've ever loved in this world, professionals got a hold of it and ruined everything. Pros made the experience of carving a pumpkin, putting together an outfit and tripping out your house for the holidays, activities which require advanced degrees in creative design, special effects lighting, and a budget that rivals the line items for NASA research and development.

Now a days, if your pumpkin isn't strobe light animated to have Darth Maul or Elsa from Frozen sing "I'm all about the Base." you're slumming.

All the go to easy costumes of prior years, vampire, pirate and zombie, have been relegated to the no longer acceptable, annoyingly sparkly, or made so over the top by recent movies and television shows, as to require actual effort to assemble. Gone are the simple white sheets with holes for the eyes. Gone are the grab six sashes, tie them across your waist and head and call yourself a gypsy. Gone are the classic black capes and pointy teeth. Every witch now looks like something from Anime, Harry Potter or Wicked.

Working the door on October 31st, I pined all night for some kid to come to the door wrapped in toilet paper as a mummy, or made into a robot using tin foil, or wearing their mother's prom dress as a princess. Instead, I got 27 Elsas, and heaven knows how many other princesses, all from Disney, all glittery, all beautiful, and all done via a Visa card.

Something was lost in all these pre-processed costumes, the same thing lost in looking at my kids loot when they got home. Everything was the same. All treats now are bite sized chocolates in foil wrappers except for the bottled water which indicated someone really doesn't like Halloween or wants their house wrapped.

I remembered getting homemade popcorn balls and multi-colored marsh mellow chocolate stained glass windows, caramel apples and straws of sugar. We tolerated the dentist who gave out toothbrushes, we understood it anyway.

But I recall the teenagers of our neighborhood t-ping the one home with the mean guy that handed out raisins. Everyone of us kids felt he deserved it. We were cowboys and football players, queens and rabbits, The oldest teen was Robin Hood and he wore his bow across his chest, and had real arrows in a homemade quiver. His dog was dressed in a burlap sack with holes cut out for his feet and a rope around his waist. He was Friar Tuck. That was part of the fun. We made up everything. Everyone made up everything. Creating what we did not have, inventing what we wished we could buy in the store brought joy...which now, we get at the seasonal costume shop, but the joy feels artificial, like fake salt.
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So I've decided. Next year, we're going to make costumes. I'm going to give them felt and paper bags and foil and tape and hopefully, my kids will discover what we seem as a people so intent on forgetting, that the fun of a Holiday is not how close to perfection we come with our look, but how perfect our look is when we go through the process of creating it. We'll have fun and it will be messy, but it will be real. And I'm going to go find some retro candy to give out like sugar straws and teach my kids how to t.p. the people who gave out bottled water and scolded my kids about their teeth. It's a matter of principle for me. They weren't even dentists!

Happy Halloween!