Halloween: A Retrospective

Parents often say that one of the best things abut having children is reliving the excitement of the holidays.

I happen to love Halloween because, in a way, I'm experiencing it for the first time. My family of origin celebrated it, but it had nothing to do with walking from door to door begging for candy.

Instead, Halloween became this bizarre ritual where we dressed like demons and sang Gospel songs.

Well, sort of. Let me explain.

When you live out in the country, you don't just skip through the neighborhood raking in the Reeses. For one thing, there aren't any street lights. For another, there aren't any neighbors, and we didn't even have a paved road until the early 1980s. Houses where I'm from are grouped by surname, generation after generation remodeling an original farmhouse before expanding into ranch houses and double-wides built just across the driveway. Acres of tobacco fields mark the border between one person's property and another, with deer and woodchucks and the occasional bobcat frolicking in between. Kids who went outside after dark, we were told, died of exposure before they reached the swingset. Night was time to get in bed and pray for sunrise.


You'll never make it, kid.

On Halloween we did get to go out-- in the car. People were just too spread out to go on foot, though it's not like we drove to the nearest farmhouse. Rural xenophobia demands one only interact with one's own kin on such an occasion, so we drove to visit relatives. Quietly we'd pile out of the station wagon, tiptoeing up the walk while old men in overalls eyed us from the stoop. "Yew all 'posed to be a GHOST?" they'd intone, Skoal dripping juicily from their lips. "Ain't that kind a thing AGIN JESUS?"

It's a solid fact that most of the relatives we visited not only did not celebrate Halloween but believed it to be the playground of the Devil. My mother, who'd rejected her Old Line Baptist roots when she married an Episcopalian, spent my childhood clinging to the doorjamb as relations tried to shove her into the outer darkness. Undaunted, she'd make phone calls a couple of days before Halloween, delighting old timers with the news that she'd be bringing the children, but confusing them mightily when we showed up in costume. These people wanted company, not trick-or-treaters. They didn't understand the protocol. After all was said and done we'd come home and dump out our spoils on the floor, grinding cracker packets and Little Debbies and sleeves of Polident into the carpet. "WHERE'S THE GODDAMNED CANDY?" my older brother would wail, slamming his door in pre-teen desperation.

Yet the ritual continued year after year at my relatives' insistence. In a stroke of brilliance my mother decided we should sing songs from Bible School, which served to both entertain and allay any fears brought on by the sanctioning, however tacit, of a pagan holiday. I would remove my witch hat and my little brother his mask, and a sweeter rendition of "This Little Light of Mine" was not to be found. Our hearts were blessed while our bags were filled with prunes and raisins, and my mother sidestepped discussions of backsliding. It was win-win.

Eventually those relatives got too old for our little visits, and younger second and third cousins who understood how Halloween worked would actually give us candy bars, though we still had to drive to get them. The thing is, I liked those early Halloweens. I liked all the weird little farm houses that had been retrofitted with electricity, and linoleum, and stairs in unexpected places, and I liked the little old ladies who smelled like wood smoke.

I'm glad we live in a more urban area. I'm glad my kids can experience the sort of storybook Halloween that my brothers and I used to read about and pine for. I'm a little sad, though, at the simplification of their childhood tapestry. I learned a few lessons about God and the many ways people choose to find Him in navigating those Halloween evenings. There were so many ways my relatives and my immediate family were the same and different. What did it mean that we all went to church, but that our particular kind caused such consternation? What did it mean that we (mostly) figured out way to love each other anyway? But these were questions that came up much later. Good and evil, heaven and hell-- in the chilly, spooky moments between the headlights going off and the porchlight coming on, it was hard to tell the difference.

Adapted from the Milkweed archives