Thoughts on Halloween.

RHYS BOWEN:

So we all survived Halloween, did we? We actually had no trick or treaters and are left with several bags of candy. Oh dear. Someone will just have to finish all those Kit Kats and Snickers, I suppose!

I'm always surprised by the number of kids who tell me that Halloween is their favorite holiday--over Christmas with all the presents and the tree, over 4th of July with the parades and fireworks, or Easter with the chocolate eggs.

I'm also surprised at the costumes they choose. I think my girls were always something sweet and adorable--princesses and fairies and maybe a good witch or two. But my little granddaughter Mary was a vampire, two years in a row. What's more, she was so convincing about it that her teacher had to ask her mother to speak to her about scaring the other children.

"They think she's a real vampire," the teacher said.
So Clare spoke to her and she agreed she wouldn't try to tell them she was a real vampire any more.
So guess what she told them?
She told them she was really a werewolf instead!

So is this the main reason that kids like Halloween? Not the candy? They love the power of being able to scare people, and feeling just a little scared themselves. Mary for the rest of the year is a sweet, well-behaved little girl (if a rather good actress).

But I'm also surprised at the number of adults who say they love Halloween. I suppose again it's the costumes, the taking on a character so different from our own--pretending to be evil, or sexy, or both. It's the one day nobody stops us if we act strangely or look even stranger.
But it's not for everyone. Especially not my husband John. The last time we went to a Halloween party he came up with the costume of an Englishman from the 1930s, wearing blazer, bow tie, yachting cap, white flannel trousers.  And what does he normally wear--blazer, sometimes bow tie, sometimes light trousers, sometimes even a yachting cap. And he thinks this is a costume???

You know how Halloween started, don't you? It's a Celtic festival that was adopted into the Christian calendar. It is the one night of the year when the door between the two worlds opened and the dead came among us. And people put on scary costumes--skeletons and ghosts--so that the dead would think they were one of their own and wouldn't take them to the otherworld with them.

Do you think they'd be convinced by a man in a bow tie and yachting cap? Probably not.

So do you still wear costumes at Halloween? If so, are you scary or sweet?