Trick or Treat - The True Meaning of Halloween

Cut through the hype and Halloween is really about only one thing - free candy – HOW can that be a bad thing? Halloween also involves breaking out your tiara, feathers, green wig or whatever glam your freak flag hides behind. When I was a kid, living with the Bohemians it also involved waiting anxiously for dark, wrestling the pet monkey into his cage, and traveling with a pack of cousins through piles of crunchy leaves on a cold October night in pursuit of a plastic pumpkin full of Junk . That is what Babushka called the glorious haul we would later spread out on the living room floor. We shared, trying to appease the monkey, but Gomer raced back and forth, sugared up and throwing handfuls of treats in retribution for being cut out of the door to door action.

I just luv when you get a Trick or Treater dressed as a pirate and boasting an actual beard. You know the teens who are easily old enough to vote who knock on the door but refuse to shout the traditional greeting. They get extra candy at my house. That’s because there really shouldn’t be an age limit. It’s simply fun. Could not wait until my first born could toddle around the neighborhood with his friends, dressed in a sheep costume I actually sewed from a car seat-cover. Yes. I sewed something. *Insert Mama Credits Here* There are photographs to prove it, much to my son’s eternal horror. In the photo he’s with his sheep buddies (there were several faux sheepskin car seat-covers and it really was a brilliant idea) standing resolutely beside Little Bo Peep holding their bright orange plastic pumpkin pails. The expression on their two year old faces reflects the fact that they were already sensing this might come back to haunt them someday.

What is your absolute favorite Halloween candy?  Full size chocolate bars always rock in my opinion, I used to try to give those out. It was a fail, they never survived for the big night. My new rule is to hand out candy I don’t like –otherwise I’m stuck handing out change on the big night, dressed in my husband’s sweat pants because none of mine will fit. Oh, don’t pretend like you haven’t been there. I also like to give out glow necklaces, temporary tattoos, stickers and microwave popcorn. Swing on by if you’re out and about. My house is the one up on top of the spooky hill, with all the pumpkins on the front porch. I’m that woman draped in glow necklaces, sporting temporary tattoos with stickers stuck all over my hubby’s sweatpants and eating a big bowl of microwave popcorn.