I’m at an awkward time in my life, Halloween-wise. I’m too old for trick-or-treating and too sober for partying, but I don’t have kids of my own to take trick-or-treating yet. We already have a black cat (who I caught drinking out of the toilet earlier tonight, which was ghastly in a distinctly non-supernatural way) and as a family we tend toward the gleefully macabre on a day-to-day basis: We literally have two urns of human remains in the living room.

I liked Halloween because I love costumes and wearing unusual things; most of my memories of childhood Halloween center around my mom’s box of old stage makeup from her days as a theater major. She loved making costumes and doing makeup, although her own costume was the same thing every year – a long red woolen hooded cloak (easy, classic, and most importantly for Maine in October: warm).

One year, my brother wanted to be Batman. So Mom dressed him in black sweatpants, a black sweatshirt, pinned a random piece of black fabric to the shoulders (we always seem to have random swaths of cloth lying around in storage), cut out the bat insignia from a piece of felt, and taped it to his chest. What we lack in money we make up for in creativity and gumption. My brother was an amazing Batman. (Not very brooding, though.)

My mom’s favorite Halloween costume of mine was the year or three I was “a glamour witch.” It was basically an excuse to wear swirly, sparkly dress-up clothes and stick a pointy hat on top of it. My sense of style was somewhat constrained throughout my entire childhood because I went to a uniform-wearing parochial school; Halloween was an excuse to let loose and wear what I wanted for a change. Now I dress like a glamour witch almost every day. Personally, my own favorite costume was the year I dressed as a drag queen to attend the Halloween dance at my all-girls Catholic school.

I stopped trick-or-treating in high school. One perk of having a sister eight years your junior is that you can extend your shelf life as a trick-or-treater by being a tagalong supervisor. Also, I looked like I was 12 until I got to college.

But the candy hauls were definitely a major highlight for me. My parents, bless them, fed us pretty healthy foods and limited candy to trips to the movie theater and Halloween, when I could really go whole hog and let my natural sweet tooth run wild. Now, of course, I’m a grown-up myself, with  my own car and money and the ability to go to the store whenever I want to get candy, instead of begging it a piece at a time from the neighbors. That particular thrill has not yet gotten old; nor has the November 1st holiday of Half-Price Halloween-Themed Candy At The Store Day.

I think my favorite thing about Halloween is how ancient it feels.

There are some traditions we modern Americans take part in every year that, if you squint while looking at them, you can see back in time thousands of years. Or maybe it’s just me that feels this way; I’m prone to introspection, a reader of history, and am Scottish in origin all the way down my mother’s side of the family.

Our holiday of Halloween has its origins in the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced, not at all obviously, sah-win); a night to honor the dead, when the boundary between the world of the living and the world of the beyond was particularly thin and porous. The costume connection comes from celebrants dressing in costumes to scare away spirits and demons. (I’m not sure who would be scared by my glamour witch costume, but I can think of plenty of conservatives who would be scared by the drag queen look).

Trick-or-treating comes from the practice of children going door-to-door in their towns, performing “tricks” (songs, dances, and probably some poorly-attempted cartwheels, knowing the unchanging nature of children) in exchange for fruits and nuts. (Pro tip: If you give fruits and nuts out on Halloween these days, you will get a terrible reputation among the neighborhood kids). So if we wanted to really be accurate, we shouldn’t call it trick-or-treating, we should call it trick-FOR-treating.

Some traditions relating to this holiday have evolved for the better, I think. Did you know that the origins of jack-o-lanterns were carved turnips? Personally, I think the American adaptation of pumpkins is a lot more aesthetically pleasing (not to mention they smell better).

But some of the ancient ways should make a rebound. For example, Samhain was an extremely bonfire-heavy holiday; depending on the interpretation (and the beliefs of the folks lighting them), the bonfires were either to bring together the community into the harvest season or to ward off witches. Either way, they’re warm, and I swear, Halloween gets colder and colder every year.

 

 

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