We always had a fun time at Halloween. We never bought costumes, but spent weeks looking around the house and trying to find things to make into a costume. The kids were transformed as they became a cowboy, or princess, or dancer, or ghost, or Blue Fairy, or kitty, or bird, or pirate, or construction worker, or a queen. We never did horror at all. One year Garrett and I dressed up as two characters from literature; Tree Beard from Tolkin’s The Two Towers and the Patchwork Girl from an OZ story.
Our greatest problem was the cold. Often it would be nice weather until Halloween night then, almost always, it would turn very cold. Our children had to wear coats which covered their costumes, which they didn’t want to do. We ended up making their costume over their coats.
When the kids were young, Garrett would take them around to the neighbor’s houses to Trick-o-treat while I stayed home and gave out candy. For a few years, the elementary school had a community Halloween event where they had games, dinner, and treats. It was fun and we all enjoyed it, especially the cake walk.
We always make Jack-o-lanterns and put a candle in it and set it on the front porch. In the 1980’s we began growing our own pumpkins, which worked well until the year that we grew “punkenzinies”. They were large like a pumpkin, but thin and green like a zuquini. They never turned orange. After that, we kept our pumpkins and our zucchini far apart.
One year when our older kids were in their teens, they decided to make a “Spook Alley” for the younger kids in the neighborhood. It sounded ok, but quickly became an excuse to scare the younger children. We never did that again.
After our children grew up, and times changed, and we had few Trick-o-treaters come to our home. Mapleton still had a lot of streets without sidewalks, few streetlights, and many long dark spaces between some homes, so the kids went instead to “city” streets. Then they started to have Trunk-o-treat in the church’s parking lots. We gave out candy from our cars as the kids came around the parking lot to us.
On a different day our community had a “Fall Social” outside in one of the neighborhood cul de sacs. We enjoyed getting together and having a chili and hot dog dinner, and having the children walk around Trick-o- treating to us while we sat by the sidewalk. Usually, we didn’t stay long since it was so cold.
When we moved to the mild climate of Washington, Utah, and we found that we had Trick-o-treaters again. Near Halloween, we had a Fall event held in the park. We have dinner, treats, games for the kids (done by the youth in the neighborhood), and costumes. I always wear my big, black, feathered hat. It is a really fun night!
I could never understand all the horror costumes, music, decorations, sound effects, and movies that many people do at Halloween. Being a “light” person, I feel very uncomfortable about anything that appears to be on the “dark” side, so our Halloweens were just fall fun and dressing up.
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