I’m not feeling it this year… I have the hat. I have the broom. I have a house full of actual pumpkin spice from the bread in the oven. But… the trees are all bare… it’s snowing… and I just feel grey…
Hallowe’en was the best holiday of the year when my kids were young. We had an enormous spider web with one of those three-foot diameter wire and fuzz spiders that was rigged up in the jack pines out front. Let loose the rope by the door and the spider dropped on beggars as they were coming up the walk. All the neighborhood kids were in on the trick and wanted to take turns with the rope. They would start talking about it in July.
I also had a nice selection of costumery because one, I owned a kid’s bookstore and two, a cloak is one thing I can sew. I made the boys into hobbits one year. We had all the Harry Potter costumes, left over from various book release parties. Steampunk and noir future punk were big. And pirates! There were many pirates.
But I’ve never been into gruesome. I don’t see the fun in blood. I hate that kids and women are always prey. (Except when they are pure evil… and still, they usually prey on kids and women.) And, well, don’t we have enough actual pain and fear? Do we have to manufacture zombies and chainsaw massacres and cannibals? (Can’t hold a candle to lymphoma and hurricanes and polyethylene in breast milk.)
This is not what Hallowe’en is to me. Yes, there is a whole lot of fun, though even as a kid I enjoyed parties and games more than sugar and horror. (Again, is blood really that entertaining?) I know I must have gone trick-or-treating, but I don’t have one memory of doing so. I do have memories of successfully catching an apple suspended on a string using just my teeth and playing “light as a feather” with my friends. (Now, that is weird…) But the fun is a mask on the deeper meaning, and the older you get the harder it is to keep that mask in place.
Hallowe’en is about mortality, plain and simple. It is the end of the harvest, the death of the year, the beginning of winter, the time of darkness. These are the days when we feel close to those we have lost, and we remember that we will join them, perhaps soon. Maybe it’s the rattle of dry leaves. Maybe it’s the cold wind like soft fingers on the back of the neck. Maybe it’s the vast open sky at night, a whole universe of utter indifference.
I don’t like feeling like a grumpy old witch, but I also don’t like that there is nothing hallowed about Hallowe’en anymore. Nor, to be honest, is there very much fun. When was the last time you bobbed for apples? Or had a bonfire? A hayride? Or danced all night at a masquerade? Does plastic-packaged candy taste as sweet as a real caramel apple? And when was the last time you were allowed to give kids something you made? Doesn’t seem like the trick-or-treating kids are having much fun. They mostly look tired, and the younger ones are frankly confused by the whole thing. It’s not that they are scared, just perplexed by adults in costumes and a whole parade of strange doorways. There isn’t a good explanation for any of this, no context. I want to bring them all inside and let them sit by the fireplace, warm and safe, and tell them ghost stories as they drink hot chocolate.
Do you know any ghost stories? Not the violent slasher stuff, but a story of a soul lost between the worlds. I collect ghost stories. Ghost stories are beautiful, sad, poignant… They evoke empathy and grief. They are morality tales, tales of human mistakes and missed chances and misunderstanding. Ghosts are angry avengers or guilt-ridden transgressors or lonely lost children who never had a chance to be fully alive. What ghosts generally aren’t is capable of interacting with the living. Except on Hallowe’en when we living beings are thinking most about endings and death. I think that is what is meant when people talk about the “veil between the worlds” being thin this time of year. It’s not that the veil thins, it’s that we are looking directly at it for once. And there is so much disaster, so many bad decisions, bad faith, so much loss, it’s hard not to be staring right through that veil all the time, even in broad daylight. Or what passes for that in early winter. We are ringed about with ghost stories in the making.
When you’re in this sort of a mood, it’s very hard to work up the energy to deal with packaged Halloween. I didn’t even remember to buy candy until last night. (And, damn! is it expensive these days!) I have pulled out the indoor decorations. I bought a pumpkin to carve, but that hasn’t happened and it probably won’t.
Now, there is an exercise in futility… work for an hour or so gutting, carving and cleaning up the mess… set your masterpiece on the porch… then watch the clock. If it’s not the squirrels, it’s the teenagers. Or it will simply freeze and then thaw into a mushy puddle. One way or another it will be destroyed before October 31st.
I did buy the overpriced packaged sugar (which feels almost like handing out poison…), but I don’t have much going on outside to attract trick-or-treaters. And, anyway, trick-or-treating isn’t much of a thing in this town. What with October snow and school-nights and the average age of Vermonters (meaning that there aren’t too many kids…), I usually end up taking the candy into work on November 1st. Maybe this year, I won’t even bother with the charade. Just leave the porch light off and toss the sugared plastic into the trash. (How’s that for darkness…)
There is one tradition that I probably will not pass up though. This pumpkin that may or may not become a jack-o-lantern (or maybe a stew with chipotle and hominy and black beans) is full of seeds. I will not let the end of the year go by without pulling those seeds out, rinsing them free of pumpkin snot, and toasting them with a bit of olive oil, garlic and thyme. And then I will eat the entire bowl with a mug of warm cider. And maybe a slice of this pumpkin bread that is scenting my house.
But maybe I’ll still wear the hat…
©Elizabeth Anker 2024
By My Solitary Hearth 
Halloween was never celebrated in South Africa during my childhood – or even when our children were young. In the last decade or so we have been victims of yet another commercial opportunity to make money. Trick or treating hasn’t caught on, but I understand children have Halloween themed parties and there are several similarly themed adult fund-raisers being advertised in our town. It leaves me cold.
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