Boo!

I always say that I love the rain the way only a kid raised in the desert but moved to a rain forest loves the rain. I think I have realized that I love Halloween the way only a Christian Conservative Reformed can love Halloween. For years it was my number 2 holiday and closing in on Christmas quickly. Some of that has died off because of where we live. Year after year of putting out my cool Halloween decorations to only get a dozen trick-or-treaters starts to suck the holiday joy. But I still love to see everyone's costumes and decorations.

Growing up there wasn't a lot of Halloween love. We did "Harvest Festival" at church and at school. I didn't trick-or-treat for the first time until High School when I took my nephew on the rounds. No scary costumes or decorations allowed. Nobody believes in the Occult like Christians. You have to have a bad guy for your good guy. And if you are raised super conservative you are forbidden from experiencing all of that Halloween spookiness. No ghosts, witches, vampires, Ouja boards, voodoo dolls...nothing like that. So of course once I hit high school my costumes started to shift from cute to scary pretty quickly. Sophomore year I was a Court Jester (much to the chagrin of my much cooler locker-mate, Jane). Senior Year I was a freshly turned Vampire wearing a dress that was about two sizes too small in the bust and cut so high I had to watch the way I walked.

From there it was a collection of witches, and vampires anything I could wear all black and tease my hair and put on extra make up. Now this was before the days where Whoreween really took off so though costumes could be and often were sexier than normal you didn't have the porn star quality to all of them that you seem to have now. Think Elvira instead of Sexy Children's Book Character. Seriously, that shit creeps me out. What are you going to do in a few years when you are reading Little Mermaid to your darling daughter and have the flash back that it was mommy dressing as Slutty Ariel that caused you to have your daughter in the first place? Just ewww....

Anyway...back to loving Halloween. Part of it is the dress up. I was a theater kid in school and nobody loves a dress up day more than theater kids. And we make a big deal out of it. The freshly made Vampire my senior year? Well there was a story. See Brent dressed as a Vampire for a party the weekend before and we umm...we spent a little time together at that party. Get your minds out of the gutter, it wasn't THAT sort of time. It was a few bases back from THAT sort of time. Anyway....he was supposed to come to this party and I thought it would be fun to dress as a Vamp myself. Of course it gave me an excuse to make a sexy costume (Goodwill, god love them, outfitting Halloween for years!) and it gave my friends and I an idea for a grand entrance. I was wheeled in to the party in a coffin. My friend Cinnamon was dressed as Morgan la Fey (theater kids don't always make common choices either) and she would call upon the black arts to raise the dead. So the lights are dimmed, candles are lit, she does her spell and I bang open the lid and rise from the dead. We got people to jump and scream. It was awesome. Turns out Brent never made it to that party so the sexy costume to get his attention again was in vain. Well for his attention anyway.

I love companies that do dress up days. I have friends back in Louisville that work for an agency that does it up right. Each department competes with the others. I get pictures each year from them. Peter Pan and crew. The Scooby Gang including a real Great Dane. This year there was even a video clip. They dressed up Gangnam style complete with choreography. They were fabulous!

I love the little ones whose parents dress them up as peas in a pod or burritos. This year my new best friend Gigi is dressed up as a box of pop corn while Daddy is Orville Redenbacher. It's too sweet for words. I loved watching C decide what he wanted to be each year, and how that reflected what he thought was cool. He went to a creative arts high school so they dressed up every year and picking him up on Halloween was always fun. To see what kids who wore the most interesting things on a day to day basis would choose for a costume? Fabulous!

This year we have a hockey game on Halloween so I didn't bother pulling the skulls and gravestones out and putting them up. No outside decorations, no inside decorations. I did "decorate" my Facebook page and dressed up there. But the holiday will be about dropping the puck instead of passing out candy this year.  Though I have decided on a costume.....

I'm going as a sexy hockey fan.