Hitting Send

Halloween. The night when one can dress up as anything one wants to be, knock on the neighbor’s door and ask for candy, threatening to ‘trick’ the occupant if your confectionery demands are not met. This seems a bit removed from the origins of honouring ancestors, while frightening off evil spirits, and wasn’t the way I was introduced to the holiday. My first memories of Halloween come from my early days of attending an Amsterdam Waldorf school. In keeping with older traditions, I carved root vegetables, placing a lit candle within and then proceeded along a dark path in a local park with my fellow excited classmates, voices echoing in united song. It was a lovely tradition, which I enjoyed a great deal.

For my first remembered Americanized Halloween, my grandmother, with whom I was living at the time, went out and purchased my first Halloween costume. I was going to be Strawberry Shortcake and I was really excited about it! Then I saw my costume! lol The plastic mask with nose holes and slits for eyes which in no way matched up to my own eyes and nose and an ill-fitting vinyl dress was far from what I had imagined, and left much to be desired. It’s probably pretty fortunate that grandma would only let me go around the block (no streets to cross)! Hey, cheers to GenX! We somehow managed not to suffocate or get hit by cars despite those dreadful masks *and* we survived the razor blade in apple/poisoned candy scare, for which there was very little basis and have since been deemed “false” at snopes.com! Anybody else remember that fears ran so deep that local hospitals volunteered to x-ray our candy? Yeah, ’cause what’s a little radiation? haha

I turned my dislike for mass-marketed costumes around in the seventh grade. I must have spent a month making a faux bath tub out of a cardboard box, which I painted inside and out, lined with plastic, and filled with shaving cream around the top. Donning only a nude leotard, it looked as though I was naked in my tub. hehe I have a vague memory of singing, “Splish splash I was takin’ a bath…” Did I do that?? lol Perhaps.. ummm, okay, likely!

When a girlfriend invited me to her house for a Halloween party last year, I chose to embrace the old tradition of honouring ancestors with my own enjoyment of costume making. I got out my great-grandmother’s long blue slip, of which I am quite fond and very grateful to be in possession. I thought of her as I dressed, lighting a candle in her honour. Around my neck I wore a picture of Sigmund Freud. haha Get it? Yep, I went as a ‘Freudian Slip’!

This year my girlfriend and I drove to a local Halloween store to check out the costumes. The first thing we noticed was that the adult costumes were in the front, the children’s costumes reduced to a mere back corner. Okay, perhaps not that surprising in LaLaLand, nor was the fact that the name of almost every costume we came upon began with the word “naughty”! There was the Naughty Doctor, Naughty Nurse, Naughty Schoolgirl, Naughty Nun.. Naughty Nun?!?! Oh, my! Feel free to substitute that word with “sexy”, and you can go as a Sexy Witch, Sexy Ghost, etc. So, we’re still dressing as Ghouls and Goblins, as in years past, we’re just doing it in far less fabric! Then again, I can see how being able to wear anything one wants without fear of judgment is appealing. The costumes.. still not so much! lol After trying on some outfits, I decided to put my costume together with my talented actress friend, which is far more fun for us both! What are we going as?! Well, she’s going to be a Sexy Vampire, and I’m going as a Sexy Black Cat, of course!

When I relayed the above to my mom in a recent phone conversation, she suggested I go back to my old roots of Waldorf traditions, and upon googleing “Waldorf and Halloween” was led to dressing as Gossip Girl’s Blair Waldorf, the costumes for which were very risque! Ahhhh, yay! Point made! lol But when I did further research on my own, I found different Waldorf schools around the globe and the celebrations they were holding really touched my heart. One will come together honouring the Earth by discussing sustainable living. Another by holding festivities such as bobbing for apples, and of course singing. Here is a sweet video of Waldorf children trick-or-treating, which brings back happy memories for me and made me smile.

However you dress and celebrate, enjoy your Halloween!