Halloween Is A Dumb Holiday!

Someone has to say it.

Or am I just jaded and angry because I have lost my little girls to Teenager Halloween?

I never really liked Halloween. It was always tradition so I went along with tradition. But now that the kids are getting older, Halloween is intolerable.

I admit having enjoyed sewing their toddler costumes and watching my girls glow under the light of the carved pumpkin we’d gutted for decoration and seeds. I even bought the Halloween accoutrements; my favorite being the witch’s hand bowl that will grab yours as you dig in for your treat. Yes, those were good times except for the Halloween hangovers filled with exhaustion, sore throats and runny noses, all biological consequences of deluging your body with sugar.

Today, sugar is the least of my worries.

You’d think I would be upset about our material world gone crazy obsessive about making money to the point of convincing people we must now string orange lights around our houses.  A commercial nightmare, Target has eight aisles filled with sugar and Chinese plastic. Also, who is splaying their bushes with that white cotton?  One might assume that Halloween stuff, having quadrupled its volume of sales in a year (don't quote me on that), is what’s irritating me.

But that’s not it.  People can string lights. That’s fine. I’m a capitalist sympathizer. No worries. What does bug me though is when I walk through the store and see young moms tossing bags of candy into their carts and reaching for the fairy costume as their daughters beg for the purple one. It is then that my heart breaks. I want to pull those moms aside and say, “Enjoy this while you can! Take lots of pictures! Hold your babies at night!”

I stand there and want to yell, “Yeah, you just wait. That Little Mermaid grows a rack and – overnight – turns into iParty’s sex object. Your cute little kitties become all grown-up and fodder for gawking men. What was sweet and pumpkin just turns all slutty and scary.” I want to scream in the middle of Target. “You just wait!”

Long gone are the simple hayrides where we curled up under a blanket with a full moon overhead, and a possible sheeted ghost flying from the tree branches. In Teenager Halloween, it is a full-blown chainsaw massacre with the damsel’s boobs hanging out of her frightened chest as she traipses across the theme park donning her fishnets. Now she holds a knife dripping with fake blood repeating to herself, “I didn’t mean to kill her.” She follows your babies onto the roller coaster with her eyes glazed over, “I didn’t mean to kill her.” She’s probably got a “handle” of vodka stashed in her car. “I didn’t mean to kill her.” This is Teenager Halloween.

I shudder and go to my happy place where they are still begging to dress up like Hermione from Harry Potter and visit Grandma.

Lately, I’m lost looking at pictures of the Halloweens I thought I hated. I miss those days. At dinner, I beg the girls to carve the pumpkin with me. No time. Too much homework. I ask if I can sew something. Nah, I’ll just grab something at iParty. Do you want to go buy candy with me? Silence.

“Sure, Mom. I’ll go with you. You’re not buying pencils this year, are you?”

“No, I’ll get all the chocolate you want,” I say.

I’ll take the Halloween hangover.

(Photo credit: Lifted from Google images)