“…are closing in to seal your doom.“
Halloween is wonderful because it is the holiday that asks the least of its participants, while providing the most reward.
Easter and Christmas have those heavy religious overtones. If you’re a kid and you’re not careful, you might just get bundled into those fancy clothes you hate and dragged to church, where you will sit for what seems like days, not-listening to words that mean nothing to you anyway.
Thanksgiving can be a bear if you don’t like turkey, heavy starches, or family. I always enjoyed my family visits, because my family felt a pretty deep connection and got along well. But for millions of people in dysfunctional families, Thanksgiving must be torture.
(Oh, and did I mention that the ever-increasing attention paid to Thanksgiving weekend shopping has corrupted that holiday with the same foul greed-poison that curdled Christmas? Ring-a-ding-ding.)
New Year’s Day brings with it the nagging subliminal reminder that you’re supposed to magically Do Better next year, even though it’s all you can do to make the rent and keep breathing. Yeah, that’s gonna happen.
Washington’s Birthday and Columbus Day don’t really ask much of us; but then again, they don’t give us much, either. One is a day to spend knocking the icicles off your gutters, and the other is a day to spend cleaning leaves out of your yard — or traveling interstate to appease some family member you won’t be seeing at Thanksgiving.
Halloween, on the other hand, is a day to put on a flammable plastic Ace Frehley costume and go collect all the Three Musketeers bars you can carry, with no obligation in return except to mumble an occasional “thank you” through the confines of your mask. And if you don’t say “thank you,” it doesn’t matter: The person at the door has two more bags of candy bars, wants desperately to get rid of them, and isn’t going to go chasing you for the purpose of getting their candy back.
Beat that with a stick.
Me circa 1980. I never did get to be the Space Ace for Halloween, but that doesn't mean I didn't have some classic costumes anyway. (This one looks more like Casey Kasem than Arthur Fonzarelli.)
I have no idea how, or even if, people celebrated Halloween when my grandfather was a kid. By the time I knew him, he was where I am now — on the other side of the big door, handing out the candy to the ghosts and goblins.
And of course, he was celebrating the holiday on his calendar:
Oct. 31, 1961. Boo!
Oct. 31, 1967. The witches fly west...
Oct. 31, 1975. ... and the witches fly east.
Unfortunately, my grandpa did not keep consistent year-to-year count of how many visitors he got. It would have been interesting to see whether the flow of children to his door ebbed and flowed in keeping with national youth demographic trends.
(That said, I only have his calendars for the years 1961 to 1975 — years thick with the youth of the Baby Boom generation. So I imagine the demand was probably pretty consistent.)
Eighteen trick-or-treaters doesn’t seem like all that much. That might have been because Hope Street was a comparatively large and busy street, not a quiet suburban tract. My guess is that most kids did their trick-or-treating someplace else — not that they wouldn’t have found a friendly reception at 1107 Hope, had they stopped in.
Finally, I will note with quiet approval that Stamford did it right.
Here in eastern Pennsylvania, most townships (with the eager agreement of those white-knuckled prigs who run school districts) have decided that tricks-or-treats must happen on the Friday prior to Halloween. That’s like decreeing that gifts must be opened on the Thursday prior to Christmas, or that resolutions must be made on the last business day before New Year’s Day. Complete bushwah, in other words.
But you’ll notice that my grandpa marks Halloween on Oct. 31 every year. (Other calendar entries not included here also mention “spook” visitors coming on Oct. 31.)
No school boards deciding to reset the calendar in their own image. Just candy n’ costumes, and maybe the occasional bit of toilet paper. And if it’s a Tuesday night, well, funny how life still goes on on Wednesday.
Yeah, they know how to roll in New England; and I’ll get back there someday, some way. Right now, though, I’m going to go make sure I’ve got enough Three Musketeers bars laid on.
You think three bags are enough?
(P.S.: Come back tomorrow for a bonus pop-culture post with vague relevance to my grandfather. No Ace Frehley content.)
Hope Street 
My understanding is that Halloween had more of an element of “tricks” in an earlier period. You know, overturned outhouses and that sort of thing in rural areas.
Yeah, if you didn’t have treats to give out, then your pumpkin would get smashed, or something.
Gotta add, New Paltz does it right. They close traffic down Main St. & have an early parade of anyone who wants to dress up and walk in it.This encourages some pretty wild costumes on adults & children. It has included a lot of costumed dogs lately, as well. At midnight, the SUNY students invade the Main square in costume–I haven’t observed that end of it lately–I am in the early parade crowd!
That does sound pretty cool. I have always thought costumed pets were a little goofy, but some people do put an awful lot of time and effort into it.
To me, the glory days of Halloween were on Timberbrook Lane, when we would have up to 125 revelers on 10/31, we would be in costume, try to surprise them and chase them out the door and down the street (after giving them their treats, although we could have saved a lot of money on candy with this tactic). Your brother, when quite young, got caught in a crowd of exiting screaming teenagers once and we found him outside in the yard.
The other Halloween that sticks in my memory is 1970, when your mother was quite pregnant with your brother Eric (who ended up being born November 16th), and dressed as the great pumpkin.
Have always liked Halloween, and if one is to believe the newspapers (I’m sure you’ll have a wry comment about that), it is growing in popularity as an excuse for adults to party. Saw an article yesterday with tips from Martha Stewart on having a successful Halloween party.
Was in Hong Kong once during the September full moon, when they have a vaguely similar but more serious holiday in which all ages gather in parks and light candles and remember their deceased ancestors. Much better behaved than in the U.S.!
Trick or Treat!
Your Fadda
My mom always counts the number of trick-or-treaters they get. One year they ran out of candy and had to resort to nickels and peanuts. Now they hardly get any…their neighborhood has aged, but – I hate to say this – I think there is less trick-or-treating than there once was.
Nickels and peanuts! Excellent.
I don’t know if there’s less trick-or-treating, but I will say this: The percentage of homes in my current neighborhood that stay dark on trick-or-treat night is considerably higher than it was in my childhood neighborhood.
It used to be that maybe one house per street in my sprawling suburban tract wouldn’t take part — and I’d inflict silent mental calumny on them as I walked past.
In my current neighborhood, I’d bet one out of every five houses stays dark.
I wonder why that is.
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