Halloween has always been my favorite holiday. I loved dressing up and going out at night. Of course, until I was ten or so, my friends
and I all went with a parent. .
Unitarian Christmas just seemed to get lost in a blur of
inclusive celebrations – a Hanukah party featuring pancakes without maple syrup, which we kids
threw at each other; a Thanksgiving Seder, with readings from The Mayflower
Compact and other Puritan writings instead of Exodus; and a Solstice Ceremony,
which my father refused to attend. There
weren’t a lot of males there; afterwards my mother and her Unitarian
girlfriends and their daughters would go out to a diner. The grownups would talk about the Goddess and
lament that the church hadn’t attracted any Wiccans. Usually someone would complain about all the
Christmas chores she still had to do, and they would laugh and say, “What are
you, a Jesus freak?” It was fun but a
little uncomfortable to see the moms this way, laughing and talking and having
a good time.
When my mother was a child, she had lived in a suburb that was really The Country. There were cornfields on two sides of her house. She and her friends would go into the fields, pick corn, shell it, and on the nights before Halloween, go out without adults, sneak up to windows of houses, throw the corn, and run away. (It was animal corn, so it was hard, like the decorative Indian corn you see in stores, although in the summer, when it was soft, she and her friends would eat it.) The bolder ones would ring the doorbell. The kids loved this story and would have loved to try it, but fortunately there aren’t any cornfields around.
In our town, Trick or Treat night is always the Friday or
Saturday before Halloween, so the kids won’t be kept up too late on a school
night. This makes Halloween rather
anti-climactic, but I always make a Halloween dinner, which we eat by
candlelight; pumpkin soup from the intellectual deli and grilled cheese
sandwiches imprinted with a jack-o-lantern. (I got the stamp in a set, with
stamps of a smiley face, Santa, an Easter egg, and a turkey.)
We have tomato juice to drink, since it looks like blood. When my mother was a child, she had lived in a suburb that was really The Country. There were cornfields on two sides of her house. She and her friends would go into the fields, pick corn, shell it, and on the nights before Halloween, go out without adults, sneak up to windows of houses, throw the corn, and run away. (It was animal corn, so it was hard, like the decorative Indian corn you see in stores, although in the summer, when it was soft, she and her friends would eat it.) The bolder ones would ring the doorbell. The kids loved this story and would have loved to try it, but fortunately there aren’t any cornfields around.
As usual, the girls had started planning their Halloween costumes in September. Perhaps because she had been cheated out of a first communion veil, Cilla decided to be a bride. Betsey couldn’t decide between being a
vampire or a zombie until Josh decided that he wanted to be a zombie. So vampire it was. It would involve lots of makeup, perhaps
because Betsey felt she’d been cheated out of being allowed to wear lipstick
for the wedding.
Karen asked me if I wanted to come over and try to contact
Margaret with a Ouija board. I said we
always watch scary movies together, and why didn’t they come over here. Maybe it makes me a wuss, but after The Exorcist, which gave me nightmares
as a child, I’m afraid of them. I asked
Karen if they were going to have pea soup.
I would have told Karen that it would probably be more
worthwhile to say a prayer for Margaret on All Saints’ Day, but I didn’t want
to be an obnoxious churchlady.