HaLLoWeeN TreAts

Even knowing it was Halloween last night, I still jumped when there was a banging on our front window. We weren't prepared for trick-or-treaters. Even though we live in a pretty dense neighborhood, it doesn't seem like the kids go trick-or-treating here. So when I heard the loud banging on the window, I was a little concerned.

J pulled the curtain aside and I heard a voice call out, "hey, you got any candy?" He said it was a kid, but it certainly didn't sound like one to my ears. He told him no, and the kid went away.

Seriously, I find Halloween to be the weirdest "holiday". Growing up I never thought much about it because, well, why would I? I just knew that once a year we dress up in funny costumes. I knew they were supposed to be scary for some reason, though I was never quite sure why, and maybe it was because I was a girly girl, but I never particularly wanted to look like an ugly corpse. So I dressed up as Raggedy Ann (or was I Raggedy Andy and my sister was Raggedy Ann?) or ... wow, I can't even remember. Maybe my mom will send me some scanned photos to remind me. (Hint, hint, Mom, in case you have nothing better to do this afternoon?)

I do remember that my favorite costume was when I was a bunch of grapes. My mom got these large dark purple balloons from a craft store, which were much better than the easily poppable regular lavendar ones that come from CVS. She made me a little cap out of dark green felt, and it was easy to wear my winter coat under my costume, so I was actually warm for once without having to sacrifice my costume (by wearing the coat over it).

And so I went door to door, with my parents and my sister, ringing doorbells, saying "trick or treat". What did that even mean? I hardly knew. Was I threatening to trick them if they didn't treat me? Or was I offering them the choice and hoping they'd come through with a treat?

It's just a bizarre tradition, if you think about it. The origins of Halloween reads like a drawn out game of Telephone in which the end message gets completely distorted as it's passed along. Not that it particularly matters I suppose, but it's funny to me because if someone wanted to start up a holiday that involved going door to door and asking people for goodies, I imagine it would be pretty hard to get off the ground.

Reading about Halloween on various blogs over the past few days, I came across this story of what appeared to be a homeless person going door to door. I thought to myself, wouldn't it be nice if the whole country agreed to set aside one day where homeless people can go door to door and people actually give them food or other handouts? Yes, I realize that is totally stripping Halloween of all its fun, and that giving to the poor isn't exactly what Halloween is supposed to be all about. But I think it would be fantastic if we had holidays like that.

Comments

[zenchick]

I DO think it would be nice if one night a year homeless people could go door to door.
I think it would be exponentially nicer if there actually were no homeless people do to that. If we were not able to actually tolerate people living among us in such suffering.
{steps off soapbox}

[Marisa]

Hey, thanks for finding my little story and linking to it. What I loved about that moment is that instead of telling this man to take a hike (as many people would do), my dad instead offered him more candy and little recognition of his humanity. That's more than most normally get on Halloween.

[JtH]

Brilliant idea.

[The Lazy Organizer]

My thoughts exactly! Weird Holiday.