Post Halloween Letdown

There are Halloween People and there are Christmas People.

I am a Halloween person.  I have loved scary stories as long as I remember being alive.  Ditto for scary movies.  I like dressing up in a costume that hides my real identity, like autumn leaves, like seeing trick or treaters in their costumes.  I like carving my jack o' lantern, lighting it with a real candle, and like the smell of the cooking pumpkin.  The baked seeds are a favorite treat of mine. I like miniature Snickers candy bars, which I only buy this time of year, with the intention of giving them away. I like my Mexican Day of the Dead miniature figures, my hand carved raven with a star in his beak, my collection of black cats.

I like the fact that I am not obligated to do anything for Halloween by way of cooking, decorating, card sending or festivities organizing.  Nobody judges me one way or the other if I just ignore Halloween, which I don't.  This year we re-watched Werewolf of London, a documentary on Lon Chaney, Halloween, and Werner Herzog's version of Nosferatu.  I re-read Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes for its beautiful language and meditation on the nature of good and evil.  We went to the farm market for doughnuts and apple cider, and our pumpkins.  We visited the local pop-up Halloween store, though we didn't buy anything.  We put candy in a basket and waited for the children to come down the dark leaf-filled street.

Only three rang our doorbell. 

I hope they were out on other streets, that trick or treating hasn't disappeared completely.  I see costumed youngsters on the pages of my friends on Facebook, so children still dress up.  Maybe my street is too steep, too dark, too scary.  I don't know, but I sure have lots of miniature Snickers left.