In praise of Halloween

 

       I don't know why Halloween seems to be getting bigger every year, but I do like that fact.  We're annoying about holidays around here anyway. I'm a sucker for any excuse to put up twinkly lights and juvenile paper decorations -especially when made by my juveniles. Feisty Pants' sister, Hippie Pants, is 23 and I still have her stuff from pre- k. We put up Christmas decorations on Veteran's Day (Suck it Grinches). Halloween goes up around Labor Day. 

        Some of it is, I don't like the heat, you see.  I spend all summer bitching and whining and counting the days til the leaves begin to turn and I can smell apples falling off my neighbors apple tree into my backyard.  A silly paper cut out of a witch or the crunch of leaves of underfoot and I'm ready to be magically transported to the land of apple scented everything and pumpkin spice anythings.

        Add to that the fact that Feisty Pants spent every Halloween (and many Thanksgivings) in a hospital room until she was six and every Halloween at home becomes a triumph. It's  Christmas and Carnivale and Day of the Dead all rolled into a sheer moment of "pooky" (the way FP pronounces spooky) awesomeness.  And my kids have inherited my sense of nerdy fun. Ghosts, dinosaur,dragons,zombies, ufos, bigfoot.   If its kinda weird, we love it.  Halloween really is our comfort zone.

        So, please, don't tell me its somehow evil. (I don't care)  Don't give me lectures on tooth decay. (The 10 yr old doesn't eat the candy so much as just lick it a little bit and the adults can look out for themselves)

Don't roll your eyes if I cancel appts on Halloween. (Who expects anyone with kids to show up then???)

And especially, well meaning safety nazi, don't tell me it's too scary for kids.  I don't think you're giving kids enough credit.  A little bit of the safe kind of scary is how they learn to deal with the real stuff.  And in Feisty Pants' case; scary for her is IV needles given by faceless monsters with lab coats and scary masks, the sound of helicopters taking her away from her family to scary people who do painful things to her without her permission in hospitals very far away,  medical professionals who just seem mean to her and cannot understand what she is trying to tell them because her speech is garbled.  Freddy Kruger ain't got nothing on an ER doctor popping a hole through your shinbone to insert an IO because you're too sick and dehydrated for an IV.

            So, every Halloween, we're gonna grow fangs and howl at the moon and run with the werewolves.

Lead, follow, or get out the way.