Halloween 2024
halloween
One Good Thing from Helene
Halloween 2023
Neighbors
Halloween 2022
Autumn Walk
When I took the dog out for a walk tonight, I forgot for the who-knows-how-many-th time about the Halloween house up the street from us. The kitsch-fill yard that amounts to little more than hundreds (no exaggeration) of plastic Halloween characters all lined up shoulder to shoulder. There’s no thought to it, no attempt to create any kind of little scenes throughout the yard — just a bunch of plastic all lined up.
And it scares poor Clover to death every time we walk by there and one of the animated ones starts moving and talking.
Halloween 2021
Halloween 2020
In some ways, the same as it’s always been.
Friends, friends, friends — no, make that family.
Yet not the same at all. We have all curtailed our outings and meetings to virtually nothing and many of those that remain have become virtual.
So Halloween lite.
Halloween 2019
Halloween Preparation
L baked cupcakes for the party we’ll be going to tomorrow evening.
The Boy and I made the jack-o-lantern.
Then the kids played Go Fish, even during a bathroom break…
Halloween 2018
Halloween 2016
Halloween 2015
Halloween 2012
With the Boy just getting over some congestion, there was only one option: a quiet, stay-at-home Halloween. Which would have been horrible for the Girl, except for the fact that a neighbor offered to take her trick-or-treating with her daughter and another friend.
Apparently “trick-or-treat” was less accurate a description than “pillage and plunder.”
There was one thing missing, though: a visit to knock on Nana’s and Papa’s door. Still, they weren’t willing to break that tradition, so they came to us this year.
And naturally, Papa monopolized the Boy.
Halloween and the Saints
Pumpkin
It must be a Polish Christmas cultural spill-over: we put out our lone Halloween decoration — a modest Jack-o-Lantern — on the twenty-ninth. Poles traditionally put up the Christmas tree just a day or two before Christmas, so I guess out late J-o-L is a sort of cultural cross-contamination. That or our hectic schedule.
This year, at least, we managed to make the time. Two years ago, we managed something, but last year it was a wash: the J-o-L-to-be sat in the carport, abandoned and unloved, until well after Halloween.
Naturally, as we worked on the pumpkin, the obvious comparisons came to mind: The Girl is now old enough to help, even if her help is a little more hindrance than anything else: a tentative hand in the pumpkin, a brush with the slimy entrails, followed by a sudden decision. “I don’t want to help.”
But she’s already helped enough by planning the design and serving as a consultant. This year’s J-o-l was simple: a princess with a crown.
The Girl choosing a princess: how unexpected.
Prayers and Candles
Today is All Saints’ Day — one of the best times to be in a Catholic country like Poland. This morning, every single cemetery in Poland had something like this going on.
Every year I write the same things and probably show some of the same pictures. Since we haven’t experienced All Saints’ Day in Poland since 2004 (has it really been that long?), I’ve only a very limited stock of photos, and an even more limited stock of stories: I can only tell the same stories so many times before even I get tired of them.
That’s something of the appeal of it: the repeating ritual of the Catholic liturgical calendar means we’re always coming back to the same place. It makes life less of a straight line and more of a spiral.
One of the most calming and consoling times in that spiral is the evening of All Saints’ Day, when all the cemeteries flicker with the light of thousands of candles, and the hissing, crackling, and popping of the candles punctuate the prayers of the faithful.
I would visit the cemetery at least twice: once when the priests were leading prayers and a second time when no one else was there. Both were calming in very different ways.
Surrounded by Poles who had intimate connections to the cemetery — here lies a brother, a mother, an uncle, a great-grandmother — I felt the peace of the community, even though I was an outsider. Catholicism is very communal and intimate, and prayers in a candle-light cemetery are the epitome of that intimacy and community spirit.
Yet it was when I was alone that I felt more calm than I’ve ever felt in my life. Surrounded by death, I felt more alive than any other time of the year.
Halloween, in comparison, is so distinctly American: commercial, whimsical, with just enough evil to make us worry but not enough to make us act.
I prefer the Polish Catholic version, and I would imagine I always will.
Signs
Some signs of autumn:
- The heating comes on intermittently. It’s a relief: we’re always worried about the heating in This Old House every fall: we’ve had enough worries about it.
- I wear jeans and flannel around the house. The mornings are chilly, as are the evenings: nothing is cozier than flannel.
- There’s always hot coffee or a cup of tea at my side.
- Saturday mornings are inside mornings.
Some more signs:
Birthday picnics continue into the darkness and include sweaters and oysters:.
I ask the Girl if she’d like to try one. The shells have her undivided attention; the goodies inside, less so.
“You want to try?” I ask.
She touches the freshly-steamed oyster, licks her finger, then says, “No! It’s gushy!”
More signs: Sunday night trick-or-treat.
Riches
With L’s newly found sweet wealth, a daily activity is the counting of the candy. We pour it all out at the kitchen table; we dump it on the coffee table; we spread it around the floor — we count it again and again. And again.
It’s a blessing and a curse, really: she is counting, but I’m not sure what she’s counting is actually worth counting.
We were hoping that L’s initial reaction to candy — a wrinkled up nose and immediate retreat — would last, but she’s developed a love for sweets that we absolutely have to monitor.
“That much candy will last you for two months,” I guessed the first time she dumped it out; with our one-a-day rule, I just about got it right.
Halloween 2009: Candy, Candles, and Costumes
This time of year comes around and I begin thinking once again of all the different ways I’ve experienced it.
As a youth, I avoided it. Halloween was bad, just another marker of evil in an evil world. Our church explained it along lines like this:
Throughout mankind’s turbulent history, Satan has always managed to find a way to separate man from God (Isa. 59:1-3) by tempting him into various sins and false ideas that may seem right–that may seem innocent and harmless–but are in direct opposition to God! […] Even when the Roman Catholic Church attempted to gloss over strange pagan practices of the Celts and Romans, it introduced its own false, Satanic doctrines, passing them off as Christian. Halloween is riddled with deceit and falsehoods. (Source)
In Poland, I experienced All Saints’ Day: quiet reflection, talking with family and friends, and candle-light cemeteries.
And now, with a child of my own, I experience trick-or-treating for the first time. I can’t say that it’s something all that thrilling: not being a big candy fan myself, I can see that I verily easily lived without the experience. The thrill is vicarious.
This evening, we took L for an evening of trick-or-treat in a well-heeled neighborhood where the houses are large and packed closely — lots of return on the walking investment, and there were literally hundreds of families there.
The whole neighborhood was decorated, with some going to the extreme.
The hosts made everyone feel at home — even the dads who were upset about missing the game.
But none of us had any interest in the game. We — specifically L and her friend — were there for one thing alone.
Almost every house had its front porch light on, so the candy was bountious. L’s Jack-o-lantern basket was literally too heavy for her to carry. When we got home, we counted: 60+ pieces. Enough for two months.
