The Magic Doesn't Expire

The Boston Globe

In the beginning, I did it for my children - or that's what I told myself. I made Halloween costumes, for them. I asked my husband to fashion a giant spider web between two oak trees on the front lawn, for them. I dangled creepy looking spiders and bats from ceilings, bought plates festooned with witches, packed away everything that was summer and replaced it with anything that was Halloween.

I even painted my face green and dressed as a witch, for them.

And then they grew up and left home and I continued to do all these things. And I learned that it hadn't been for them, after all. Halloween and all of its trappings had always been for me.

But why? Pumpkins? Smiling ghosts? The color orange? Pretending to be someone else? The chance to knock on strangers' doors? The cache of candy at the end of the night? None of this is magical. And yet, together, it's like a witch's brew. It casts a spell that lasts a lifetime. It must, because here I am, old now, but still enchanted.

I have ghosts on shelves and witches in cabinets and a witch at the dining room table looking into a crystal ball. And ghouls on dishes and black cats and grinning pumpkins.

And it isn't even October.

When I was young, my mother dressed me as a ballerina, forcing a tutu over a wool coat and leggings. Even worse, she insisted on trick-or-treating with me. I should have hated this night. But I didn't. I loved walking around our block in the dark of early evening, porch lights on at all the houses, doors wide open, kids, big and little, everywhere you looked, on the street, on the stoops, wearing paper bags over their heads, or sheets.

The air was so cold you could see your breath. It didn't matter.

We stayed out until our fingers ached, until our paper bags were filled with Turkish taffy and root beer barrels and Hershey's and 2 Musketeers bars, which we packed in our lunch and ate for weeks.

Halloween was, even then, bigger than the sum of its parts.

How did a simple little holiday for children become an entire season, second only to Christmas in terms of decorating? What kind of fairy dust provokes Americans to spend billions of dollars on plastic ghouls and flying witches? Unity Marketing reports that last year alone, we spent $3.2 billion on Halloween decorations, up 21 percent from the year before. Why are we all so crazy about Halloween? When I was 21, I wore a red dress with fringe and was a flapper. A few Halloweens later, I wore white and was Daisy Buchanan. I've been Glinda the good witch, English royalty, and a farmer's wife. But most years I've been your typical black-toothed, green-faced, broom-toting, ugly, look-at-me-and-scream-your-lungs-out, ordinary old witch.

My kids have been Pilgrims, bunnies, Raggedy Ann and Andy, a lynx, Cinderella, Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood, Sylvester, Ernie from Sesame Street, a boxer, and a vampire. My grandchildren have been Little Miss Muffet, a spider, a lion, a bear, a goat, a cow, and a bee.

Hold my hand to the fire and I can't remember the specifics of any other holiday. I don't know who got what or what I gave, at any Christmas or at anyone's birthday, the sole exception being the Christmas my daughter begged for and got a kitten, Lucky, who didn't turn out to be so lucky after all. 

When I taught fourth grade, I turned Charlie Brown's "Happiness" into a Halloween song.

“Halloween is buying a pumpkin

Taking him home and carving a face.

Halloween is having a party,

Dunking for apples, winning a race.”

When I was in my 30s and Tara, my friend's daughter, was only 4, I scarred her for life by leaping out from behind a door wearing a monster mask. 

When my youngest daughter was 4, 5, 6, 7, all the way until she left for college, I tortured her by painting my face green and telling her to look away if I scared her. I cackled as I said this.

My town has a Halloween parade every year. Kids and parents dress up and march from the center to the high school, where there's candy and ice cream and music and balloons.

Such ordinary things make up Halloween. But put them together - candy, a cloak, a hat, a broom, the squeak of a door, a little food coloring, and a little more imagination - and they become what Halloween is: pure magic.