What's so great about Halloween

I'm surprised at 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 has been a vampire, two years in a row. What's more, she is so convincing about it that her teacher last year 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 longer.
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. You try getting my husband to select a costume for a party tomorrow night. He's agreed to look like 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. And he thinks this is a costume???
I'm going as my character, Lady Georgie in my blond flapper wig, long backless evening dress and long pearls. Still looking for cigarette holder, and you know what? They don't seem to make candy cigaretts any more so I'll have to pay for a pack of real cigs--almost more expensive than the rest of the costume.

 I expect we'll have fun, but it's not my favorite holiday. My favorites involve the family, around the dinner table, fire crackling merrily, Christmas carols on the stereo, tree twinkling with lights in one corner. Or Thanksgiving is almost as good.

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 bewteen 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?

Do you love Halloween?