Off the Editor’s Spike: Dichotomies of Halloween

How strange this holiday called Halloween.

My wife refuses to make pumpkin pie on the grounds that she likes pumpkin pie about as much as she likes sour-cream raisin pie (not at all). Thus, we don’t raise pumpkins (we don’t even garden — which, I know, is a blasphemy in rural America).

But we’re still expected to get a pumpkin, disembowel it, and stuff candles inside the carcass to highlight the disfigurement of the hideous face we carve in its flesh — then display these bodiless heads on the front porch to encourage kids we don’t know (that’d be them) to take candy from a stranger (that’d be us).

Now that is spooky.

They say about 70% of Americans celebrate Halloween. That includes Christians even though the history of Halloween goes back to a pagan Gaelic festival called Samhain. Go figure. The word “Halloween” comes from “All Hallows’ Eve” and means “hallowed evening.” Hundreds of years ago, people dressed up as saints and went door to door, which is the origin of Halloween costumes and trick-or-treating.

I guess if you can’t beat ’em, join in.

Recently, a conversation overheard between young mothers was all about having to get costumes the kids would agree to wear. One mom was ecstatic about finding just the right get-up for $10 … which is about the cost of a king-sized candy bar (…er… only a slight exaggeration).  I suppose the rising cost of chocolate makes dollars spent on costumes seem like the cost of doing business, depending on how much loot your trick-or-treater can pack back home.

How will COVID affect 2020 Halloween (we’re already wearing masks, right)?

The bean counters say revelers across the United States will spend about 50 cents less per person on average than they did last year — $86.27, down from $86.79. The total works out to about $8.8 billion in anticipated spending across the country, down from about $9 billion last year …whew!

If COVID has us worried about the economy, maybe we should schedule a Halloween once a month for a while (with apologies to Herbert Hoover, Trump or Biden could have campaigned on that… “A pumpkin for every pot”).

It’s no wonder you see vacant stores in strip malls down in the city reopen as “Halloween City” or whatever. These places are packed with what-nots … “to cover all of your Halloween needs!” The problem, of course, is about our getting “needs” mixed up with “wants.”

Don’t get me wrong. I have boyhood Halloween memories beyond just a pumpkin with candles and a popcorn ball made by grandma. Do you remember getting chewing gum shaped like a cigar wrapped in clear cellophane with a paper ring wrapped around it near one end in your Halloween loot? We even passed around a few mint-flavored candy cigarettes which we pretended to smoke right in front of the folks (if you quickly crunched ‘em down and swallowed before they could say much of anything). That’s not acceptable today.

What’s next to go by the Halloween wayside? Well, maybe brooms. Broom handles never fit easily into the hands of kids nowadays (compared to Xbox controllers and the like). Brooms have been replaced by vacuums, Swiffer mops and Roomba robots. How long do you think it will take for Makita, Shark or some other manufacturer to feature a Halloween witch riding a Roomba in their next commercial?

Yes, Halloween is weird. Was it always this way?

The question came up recently in casual conversation with a 90-something-year-old. I was curious about what childhood memories the generation of that vintage might hold. There was a long pause and a blank stare before, finally, an explanation.

She seemed to apologize. She said she was an only child. What’s more, she was the only child in her class for the first two years attending a one-room school. So, nobody came to trick-or-treat at their home. The farm was at the end of a dirt road. Their farmhouse was without electricity, and there was no problem distinguishing “wants” from “needs.” Halloween? She had nothing to remember.

So, what are Halloween wants and needs supposed to be? My guess is somewhere between the extremes.

All this said, I’m going to miss Gallatin’s “Scare on the Square” this Saturday, aren’t you? I like seeing activities that create fun-filled hometown memories. It’s a void this holiday weekend that’s going to be hard to fill.

Who knows how many little tykes will ring doorbells this COVID year. Certainly, at my age, I don’t need sugar candies nor the calories from even a small slice of pumpkin pie for this Halloween holiday. Saturday night may be a bit dull around our house.

But then, there’s always next year.