Oh my! It's Halloween.
The witches have patiently waited. The ghouls have stayed hidden, and the princesses are ready for the ball. And of course, it looks like rain.
This year, I will be one of those houses that puts out a bowl of candy with a hopeful sign: Please take one.
I've thought of adding: If you take more than one, your soul will be haunted.
Or If you take more than one, your head will turn into a pumpkin. Or Your eyeballs will burst, or best of all: Your candy will be filled with worms.
But I hate to send out bad karma on an electrically charged Karma night.
So how about: Please enjoy your one piece of candy. Or Please enjoy your fortune cookie. Or Please take the whole bowl, so we can turn off our lights and go to bed.
You see, I won't be home, opting instead to trick or treat with a two-year-old. Almost every house in her community decorates for Halloween, akin to the way people decorate for Christmas.
I've come to appreciate the lavish, extravagance of a well decorated Halloween home. "Well" has two meanings: tastefully and thoroughly.
Tastefully: A few pumpkins of varying colors, Jack o' Lanterns, lanterns, a few pots of orange chrysanthemums. Maybe a few bats flying overhead, or a spider web or two. Especially beautiful is when they don't sweep the orange, red, and yellow leaves swirling around the walkway and porch. This beautiful kind of Halloween porch almost inspired me to buy a few pumpkins, but I haven't been inspired to Halloween decorate since the children all grew up. I was discouraged from pumpkin decorating because there was a pumpkin smashing tradition in our once-new neighborhood. Ghouls would steal porch pumpkins and roll them down our steep hill, steep enough that I can't make it home on snowy nights in a front wheel drive car. Long ago, those teenagers rolled pumpkins every night leading up to Halloween. The pumpkins splintered and smashed and the hill bled an orange gooey mess for a month.
Thoroughly decorated: Every inch of lawn and porch space is covered in twenty-foot skeletons, in human sized Draculas, Frankensteins, and dismembered and bloody body parts hanging from trees and fences. I appreciate the passion it takes to buy, store, and annually drag the stuff out of storage and set up looking at the most frightening creations ever made.
But here is my greater curiosity and concern. When I look at these giant spiders and hearses, and blow-up witches, I want to know where the homeowner/decorator stores it all in the off season.
This year we are a cut above our previous Halloween decorating. We will turn on our orange houselights and call it good.
Stay safe tonight!
Comments