Happy Halloween

Everybody light the pumpkins and get your candy out, the little beggars are coming. I love Halloween, and so does most of the country. It is the second most celebrated holiday behind Christmas. Halloween comes one day after Dia de las Muertas or the Mexican Day of the Dead c(celebrating the lives of the dead) and right before the Catholic All Saints Day (celebrating the faithful who are in heaven) and All Souls Day (remembering the dead who are still in purgatory). Nothing like packing all the bad holidays together.

It is said that on Halloween, the door to the spirit world opens and the dead are free to walk the earth, some visiting their families and others tormenting their enemies. Many of them may just want the candy. The tradition of dressing in costume came from trying to blend in with the spirits to avoid being haunted or possibly the living trying to sneak back through the door with the dead thus becoming immortal. Leaving treats at the door was a way to ward off evil spirits.

So a tradition dating back to nearly 1000 BC as a way to protect yourself from death has become an excuse for drunken revelry and begging. There is hardly a costume in any of the Halloween stores that pop up in the abandoned K-marts and storefronts at the beginning of October, that can't be turned into something sexy. Sexy nurse, sexy kitty, sexy anthrax victim, just shorten the shorts and show some cleavage and it becomes a sexy costume. As a kid, we always had a box of costumes in the closet; clowns, cowboys and the ever popular hobo which we would change after each trip around the neighborhood in hopes of getting more candy.

I still put on a costume on Halloween, or the occasional regular day of the year, and hand out candy to the kids that come to the house, if they're not wearing a costume we make them do tricks to earn their candy. After a while we get tired of the handouts and put the note in the bowl to "Take One" and head out on our own "Trick or Beer" run. The next kid that comes to our door dumps the whole bowl in their bag and we are done. Then we'll sit around the fire and swap stories, just like the old days...3000 years ago.