Halloween is absolutely my MOST favorite holiday of the entire year! I’ve loved it for as far back as I can remember.

As a kid, it meant at least one day of no homework so that we could dress up in really cool costumes, and get ready the school parade where parents were going to come watch us walk around the schoolyard. And it meant that my mom was going to get a few hours off work to come be my room mom and hand out treats to my friends!

And in the evening, it meant going door to door with my friends to get even more candy and treats!

Back then it was a safer world. We weren’t worried about people kidnapping us while we went door-to-door. We weren’t worried about whether the neighbors may have put poison in the treats they made for us. We didn’t have to worry about whether someone had stuck needles or straight pins in the candy they handed out.

Our biggest concerns were whether our Halloween mask would be too hot, whether we could see well enough through our mask to keep from tripping over our Halloween costumes or each other, whether or not our non-flame retardant costumes might catch fire, or how bad our stomachs might hurt in the morning if we ate too much candy.

As a teenager, I was absolutely devastated the night that I knocked on someone’s door, said trick-or-treat, and a lady looked at me and told me that I was too old to be trick-or-treating. Why is it that some grown-ups feel that it’s their job to make sure kids grow up really fast? I was 12! And some lady told me that I needed to grow up.

Not in my lifetime will I follow that advice. 🙂

So, while I gave up trick-or-treating, I certainly was NOT going to give up Halloween. Thankfully there were a lot of kids I went to high school with who were like me. They loved Halloween and they didn’t care what people thought about them when they dressed up in their Halloween costumes.

What’s really cool for me is that I’ve managed to pass along my love of Halloween to my son. He loves it as much as I do.

We dressed up when he was little so that we could go trick-or-treating together, and occasionally we found really nice people who were willing to give the “grown-up” escort a piece of candy or two! 🙂

And, even though the schools were no longer having Halloween Parades because they were concerned about child predators by that time, we’d still arrange Halloween parties for the neighbor kids to attend.

By the time he was a bit older, the world had gotten scarier according to most. So people stopped handing out candy and kids started trick-or-treating at the malls because it was well-lit and safe and there’s no predators at the malls…yeah right!

Nowadays, the religious organizations are fighting to get rid of Halloween all together & start celebrating this whole “Fall Harvest” thing. They worry it teaches kids to worship satan & witchcraft.

I say this with all due respect (AND as a Christian)…bite me!

Halloween is a unique and fun holiday. My household will continue to hang up Halloween lights, fake spiderwebs and spiders. We’ll turn on our spooky music next to our skeleton heads, witches, and light-up ghosts. And we’ll continue to put lots of candy into scary bowls that have plastic hands to grab a hold of children and scare the beejeezus out of them.

That’s right. Because that’s how ALL of the generations roll at our house! You Halloween naysayers can just wait for your egg-laying bunnies to arrive…hehehehehehehehehehe…Happy Halloween!

Warm regards,

p.s. Do you still celebrate Halloween? What are some of the activities you and your friends/family do nowadays since the “rules” have changed so drastically?