Trick or Treat!

Halloween! It was always the best.  But, do the witches and ghosts, jack-o-lanterns and skeletons, bats and black cats, spread fear or joy?

Halloween served as a right of passage.  It starts out with families and friends trick or treating in groups.  For a time parents will travel with the pack.  But, then comes the All Hallow’s Eve when you strike out on your own.  No parental supervision required.  You and your friends handling the intricacies of  the “trick or treat” and “thank you.”   Kids trusted to safely cross streets at night, in the dark, on their own.  Halloween was the pre-teens Independence Day!

It is the one “school night” bedtime doesn’t seem to matter. It is also the one holiday when school was in session the next day.  Talk about the trailblazing and the costumes and the pranks and the loot is of primary concern.  The excitement hangs in the air from the past evening’s adventure.  Teachers hate it.

Today, some $6 billion is spent on Halloween, second only to Christmas.  That is a lot of orange and black.  Here are some of my favorite hauntings from October 31.  What are yours?

Favorite scary haunted house movie:  Forget all the blood and gore and fancy special effects that litter today’s movie landscape.  The best scary movie was 1966’s classic “The Ghost and Mr. Chicken.”  Don Knott’s can not be topped.

 

Scariest treat:  Apples.  Do you eat it or don’t you eat it?  Apples got a bad wrap in the seventies with the razor blade scare.  Some folks went so far as to have treats x-rayed before kids could dig in.  Of course, caramel apples and bobbing apples were always perfectly acceptable.  We always wondered,  “who would give a kid an apple on Halloween?”

Best spooky cookie:  The Halloween Oreo!  The black wafers with orange cream are awesome!  Doesn’t matter if they taste the same as the regular Oreos.  The orange and black are the best.

Best candy:  Candy corn is okay but the classic candy bar is the best.   The standard size candy bars might seem generous, but they interfere with  sampling three or four of the little ones.  Make mine mini’s, please.  Besides, little tummies need little candies.

The tricks on you:  Really, you just found what in your trick or treat bag?  Discovering a tooth-brush is the worst.  Why not throw some floss in, too?  The tooth fairy gets her own days.  Way to disappoint that little princess or ghoul!

The neighborhood get-together is nice and safe.  A beverage, bowl of chili, cornbread and a little salad are great ways to hang with the neighbors.  But, once the dining is done, let the kids roam (with reasonable parent supervision, of course).

The experience gained exploring our world Halloween night is a part of growing up in America.   If the next generation of Americans is too afraid to walk around the block, how will we ever make it to Mars?