I'm the biggest Halloweenie.

Recently I was trying to remember when I started hating Halloween. It was my absolute favorite holiday most of my life, right up until...what? All the stuff that ruined it, that's what.

I loved Halloween as a kid. Dressing up in scary costumes, running around at night unchaperoned, being allowed to eat your weight in candy (which, in a household where refined white sugar anything was strictly verboten, was like a sanctioned yearly crack binge); but I also loved it because it was the only day of the year my family's (shall we say...non-traditional) relation to the spirit world went unnoticed--was nearly acceptable. When grandma held one of her late-night chats with the ghost of a long dead confederate soldier in April, she was a crackpot. But at Halloween? She was being festive.

Our version of the holiday was like Samhain (had the Catholic church never put the All Saints twist on it later) meets Memorial Day, only with more death. It started a few days before the 31st when grandma would pull out the family albums, the sepia portraits of great-great-grandpa or grandma so-in-so, and lay them all out on on the dining table and start talking. We spent days hearing stories about the dead, during dinner, grocery shopping, riding in the car, while making our costumes and carving the pumpkin. "That was your great-uncle Charlie," Grandma told us, holding up his photo, "Now he was a character. One night, drunk out of his mind, he got the idea to steal the neighbor's crop duster and take it for a spin. He'd never flown mind you, it's a wonder he got the damn thing off the ground...but he did. And then (her shoulders shook with laughter) he promptly crashed the plane into his own barn."

"Did he die in the crash?" we asked. Grandma laughed more, "Heavens no. Charlie? Too stubborn. He crawled out of the wreckage and swore revenge on the bastard who moved the barn into his flight path."

Halloween was how we found out where we had come from in a familial sense, and where we were going in a mortal sense. The one night a year the line between the living and the dead was blurred, souls roamed the earth, and you could actually run around and cavort with them; demanding sacrifices in their name. Through this instructional playlet about mortality--brought to you by an army of tiny little demonic public service messengers--we all got to own death for a bit. Take control of it. It was empowering. Life affirming.

Which brings me to the first time Halloween pissed me off: trying to explain to a kid dressed like a cowboy that their costume was COUNTER PRODUCTIVE, and that they were TOTALLY MISSING THE POINT. Yet I persisted, for awhile. I quietly tolerated mass produced devil costumes and molded plastic Casper get-ups (he is a ghost, after all). Until one year, I think I was about ten, I just gave up. I mean, one could construct a fairly compelling argument as to the death-relatedness and sacrifice-worthiness of let's say, Dracula or Frankenstien....but Barbie? My Little Pony? Jesus Christ, people.

I don't think I enjoyed Halloween again until my early adult years, when it changed from a quasi-pagan family ritual into an excuse to dress in revealing clothing and get drunk and party with your friends--also a fine way to celebrate the holiday in my opinion. Because kneeling in front of a toilet in a demeaning little leotard, yakking up whatever brilliant concoction your host devised shit-faced at three in the morning (What? Nothing left but Creme de Menthe and Milk? Oh, alright...Milky Mint shots!) was equally effective at bringing you face to face with your mortality.

But if I were asked to trace back to the moment or event that truly ruined the holiday for me completely, I'd have to say it was Halloween of 1994, or '93? '94. Doesn't matter for the story.

I shared an apartment with my boyfriend at the time, and our plan was to spend Halloween in the fashion preferred by most sensible twenty-something adults: hiding out at a bar, until closing, or at least until you could be sure you could return home without the threat of any little ballerinas--ballerinas! What is wrong with you people?!--ringing your doorbell. But at the last minute we felt a little guilty about our plan. We talked about our Halloweens as little kids, and how fun it was, and how it's sad, really, that nowadays the grown ups in our neighborhood either go to a party, or a bar, or sit home in the dark and pretend like they aren't there...It's not the kids fault that the holiday had been bought out by Disney and is brought to you by Mars, Inc.

So we ran out to the drug store and bought a few bags of candy, and returned home with the new plan. We'd hand out the candy, and THEN go to the bar.

By late afternoon we found ourselves getting really excited about greeting trick or treaters. As excited as I'd been about the holiday since I was a kid. We even constructed a make-shift haunted house, of sorts. I put a jack-o-lantern on the front porch, and lit a path up the porch steps to the front door with a bunch of candles, and turned out every other light in the house. He put a spooky sound affects album on the record player, and dressed up like a bloodied ghoul. He was to answer the door and scare the crap outta them, and then I'd hand out the candy. We were going to be the best damn candy-hander-outers in the city. It was going to be fucking great.

Night fell, and our first trick-or-treater rang the bell. Yippie! Boyfriend opened the door and said "Yes?" in his darkest, scariest, most ghoulish voice. There stood a mom (or aunt? babysitter? whatever, the grown-up) and a kid. Both were carrying bags, neither wore a costume. They didn't answer. They just stood there.

"You rang?" again, in the scariest, most ghoulish voice.

The mom nudged the kid, who then said, "Oh. Yeah. Um, trick or treat." I stepped in, put a piece of candy in the kids bag, the mom held our HER bag for a piece, I obliged, and they turned around and walked away.

Which was okay. I knew there was going to be a certain amount of, I don't know, dispirited poo-heads. But the fun was coming. We were getting the crappy people out of the way early, is all. The grand parade of sucrose-addled, niftily costumed children delighted by the harvest moon and our efforts, who'd gayly scream "Trick or Treat!!" at the top of their little lungs were to arrive any minute.

Except for the part where they were all the crappy people. No, seriously. Of the measly number of trick or treaters we did have (for a heavily-populated city neighborhood), only a couple wore costumes--if you call plastic fangs or a face mask and street clothes a 'costume'--but the bulk didn't even bother with that. We'd given up on anyone saying "trick or treat" about a half-hour into the whole nightmare. The worst part was the number of adults who had their kids ask for extra treats, for their 'sick (brother, sister, cousin) at home'. The first time we heard that plea we felt sorry, understandably, for the poor kid who was missing out. But he tenth time? I was praying these people were simply greedy liars using Halloween to teach their children how to be greedy liars, because any other explanation was too horrible to imagine... like if there was an actual flu epidemic going around and there were idiots out there who thought it was a good idea to feed sickly bedridden children Snickers bars. Or that someone was so impoverished and desperate, they actually NEEDED the extra candy, to stock up for winter. Whatever the reason, the no-costume-wearing, no-trick-or-treat-saying, fucked up little can I have some more people were REALLY FUCKING AWFUL AND RUINED HALLOWEEN. I HATE HALLOWEEN. I HATE IT!

Wow. I guess that answers my question. Now excuse me while I begin my activities for this evening: watching tv, drinking wine, and pretending I'm not home.

Posted by Antigeist at October 31, 2005 05:09 PM