We Grow Up and Ruin Halloween
My own Halloween nostalgia revolves around memories of small piles of raked leaves burning in the curbs between the driveways of my old neighborhood. Now, the neighborhood where I live hums with the sputtering whine of pull-start leaf blowers and exhaust fumes carried by chilly autumn winds.
It is bad enough that cynical fear mongers in our News business work Halloween’s turf trying to scare anyone gullible enough into believing that drug dealers are mixing narcotics into trick-or-treaters’ bags among the tiny candy bars and peanut butter cups, as if they would be dumb enough to try hooking kids on their inventories who can’t even get a job flinging newspapers from their bikes.
Still, at every phase in my life Halloween has been the best holiday of the year. But even as Election Days in the United States have throughout my lifetime followed closely on the heels of Halloween, only recently have our now precariously democratic elections become ominous enough to eclipse the thrills and chills of the All Hallows’ Eve spirit.
My wife and I were married on an early nineties Halloween. It was a fun wedding to which we encouraged guests to show up in costume. Not everyone did but the room was still populated with vampires, evil clowns, Cleopatra, a Confederate general and his Southern belle. A samurai shot our video and a Rennaissance Faire refugee…