HALLOWEEN, 2019
Today is October 31, 2019, HALLOWEEN, and it is snowing! I can only think about those
desperate parents who now have to put coats over the expensive costume they bought for their daughters and sons, and what they will have to do if it begins to rain, sleet, and continue to snow. Why is it that October 31st seems to have the worst weather of the year? Seldom has Halloween provided balmy, fall-like weather where the kids can hop from house to house collecting all kinds of candy which makes millions of dollars for dentists! When I was growing up, Halloween was my very favorite holiday....maybe because of all that candy! I was one of seven children, and my mother made all of our costumes. We would begin thinking about "what we would be" early in October, and then my mother would get out her sewing machine and go to work. We were princesses, cow-girls, ghosts, pirates, and anything Mother could put together. Some years, we wore the same costume as the year before, or had passed it on to a younger sibling.
We carried pillow cases and hoped to fill them up by the end of the evening when we would come home, sit in a big circle and begin the exchange. First, you had to sort the kinds of candy into piles of Snickers, Baby Ruth's, Peanut-butter cups, Almond Joys, Milky Ways etc. We would then begin to bargain with each other to score our favorite candy. You could almost never obtain a Snickers for anything, but the Almond Joys went quickly. Sometimes, we got things like, pennies or tooth-brushes (who would do that?) and no one wanted these. I don't think that our parents put a limit on how much candy we consumed Halloween night, but some of us were quite sick in the morning. This, however, was not a reason for not going to school.
When I was a mother, Halloween stopped being so much fun! We had two daughters who were as excited about Halloween as I had been as a child. There were still no Halloween stores where you could pick out and buy a costume. I had to make whatever my kids were going to wear and I agonized for weeks over what they could be. The simpler, the better, but that was not always what my daughters had in mind. And, almost every week before Halloween, they changed their minds about a costume usually based on what their friends were going to wear . I wanted to tell them to just go as themselves; that they were driving me crazy! But then, by Halloween night, I had somehow created a costume that they found satisfactory, and off they went with their friends to gather as much candy as they could. I made dentist appointments for the following month.
Happy Halloween!
Today is October 31, 2019, HALLOWEEN, and it is snowing! I can only think about those
desperate parents who now have to put coats over the expensive costume they bought for their daughters and sons, and what they will have to do if it begins to rain, sleet, and continue to snow. Why is it that October 31st seems to have the worst weather of the year? Seldom has Halloween provided balmy, fall-like weather where the kids can hop from house to house collecting all kinds of candy which makes millions of dollars for dentists! When I was growing up, Halloween was my very favorite holiday....maybe because of all that candy! I was one of seven children, and my mother made all of our costumes. We would begin thinking about "what we would be" early in October, and then my mother would get out her sewing machine and go to work. We were princesses, cow-girls, ghosts, pirates, and anything Mother could put together. Some years, we wore the same costume as the year before, or had passed it on to a younger sibling.
We carried pillow cases and hoped to fill them up by the end of the evening when we would come home, sit in a big circle and begin the exchange. First, you had to sort the kinds of candy into piles of Snickers, Baby Ruth's, Peanut-butter cups, Almond Joys, Milky Ways etc. We would then begin to bargain with each other to score our favorite candy. You could almost never obtain a Snickers for anything, but the Almond Joys went quickly. Sometimes, we got things like, pennies or tooth-brushes (who would do that?) and no one wanted these. I don't think that our parents put a limit on how much candy we consumed Halloween night, but some of us were quite sick in the morning. This, however, was not a reason for not going to school.
When I was a mother, Halloween stopped being so much fun! We had two daughters who were as excited about Halloween as I had been as a child. There were still no Halloween stores where you could pick out and buy a costume. I had to make whatever my kids were going to wear and I agonized for weeks over what they could be. The simpler, the better, but that was not always what my daughters had in mind. And, almost every week before Halloween, they changed their minds about a costume usually based on what their friends were going to wear . I wanted to tell them to just go as themselves; that they were driving me crazy! But then, by Halloween night, I had somehow created a costume that they found satisfactory, and off they went with their friends to gather as much candy as they could. I made dentist appointments for the following month.
Happy Halloween!
