All Souls

Whatever became of Halloween? I remember a time when trick-or-treating was a time-honored tradition (whatever the hell that means). Suburban residential streets would be filled with little kids in plastic and fabric costumes with their baggies or pumpkin baskets or pillow cases swaying to and fro. Adult overseers would watch from the sidewalk as their little goblin and princess skittered up the driveway to the front door of some 70's Bradyesque monstrosity covered in plastic decorations and the salvaged remains of the smashed jackolanterns the neighborhood miscreants had tormented the night before. This is the way it worked. This is the fun that was Halloween. This was the kickoff of the Halloween-to-Easter Candy Season. This was the pinnacle of the elementary school haute couture fashion season. But now? I was at a party in a neighborhood where there were hundreds of pleasant suburban houses mere feet apart--in fact, my first comment upon seeing this neighborhood months before was, "wow, this would be a great place to trick-or-treat!" It was one of those neighborhoods you could go back over two or three times with a different costume and really rake in the calories. But despite beautiful weather and the obligatory "we're open for business" lit jackolantern, we had all of four small groups of trick-or-treaters. Maybe ten kids, tops. Those were the kind of numbers we were used to living in a dark brown house at the top of a dead-end street on a hill back in Massachusetts (it was nearly impossible to even see the house as your approached it). It was pathetic.

What is motivating this cultural shift? Are parents fearful for their kids' safety? I remember when I was a kid there was the real danger of cars running over trick-or-treaters, but last night I could have driven up the front lawns of every damn house in the subdivision and not hit a single costumed child. And there were the annual scares about needles and razor blades in Halloween candy, which required parents to forensically analyze every Snickers and Reese's Peanut Butter Cup for hairline cuts in the wrappers, and immediately throw out anything that was in a hand-assembled giftie bag rather than a factory-sealed wrapper. Is it the religious component? All those families that don't believe in celebrating a "devil's holiday"... as if the devil wasn't the Mars corporation that makes the candy they're all eating at the church's alternative "harvest social" that night? Want a conversation stopper on Halloween? Just repeat what the little girl in front of me in line at the Rite Aid said to the woman at the counter when asked what she was going to be tonight: "oh, we don't celebrate Halloween." Silence. Perhaps it's the childhood obesity epidemic? Parents worry about one night of chocolate orgy but are oblivious as Jacob and Madison swim in Mountain Dew and chocolate milk the rest of the year. What happened to kids having a fun fucking night of dressing up and eating candy while supervised by vigilant parents in a non-threatening, non-satanic envionment? Is that so fucking hard that we have to just stop doing it? You people suck.

Anyway, I was a moth wrapped in spiderweb being attacked by a huge stuffed spider. The idea was great but the execution was lacking, and it broke my #1 rule for costumes: I have to be able to sit down. So the spider spent most of the evening on the floor, and my antennae kinda hurt, so for most of the evening I was a ball of spider web.