When I think of Halloween, my mind
drifts to cups of mulled cider, the crunch of fresh apples, bright orange jack
o’ lanterns, crisp leaves underfoot and the smoky breath in the evening air
that foretells the coming of winter. The holidays of my childhood evoke
memories of monster movies and spider webs, pillowcases full of candy, bobbing
for apples, spooky houses and things unknown.
And trick-or-treating.
Once a year we had permission to,
and were encouraged to, dress in costumes while travelling door-to-door,
collecting candy in our pillowcases. Looking back, I understand that Halloween
was a chance for an insecure girl to wear another skin, someone else I might be.
Our parents would ask us, “What do you want to be for Halloween?” and the
universe would open before me. When I didn’t have an idea for a costume I would
raid my parents’ closet and come out some version of hobo, hippie or gypsy. Halloween,
dipping us into darkness, was ripe with possibility for those among the living.
Halloween has its origins in the
Celtic festival of Samhain, pronounced sow-en,
eventually coming to America with immigrants in the 18th and 19th
centuries. Children went out into the night carrying lanterns lit with candles,
called samhnag, made from turnips. The root vegetables were carved with frightening
faces to scare away the spirits wandering the night. Children went from home to
home, guised in supernatural costumes, where they were given offerings of food or
coins. The gifts were meant to help the children ward off any spirits wishing to
do harm on Samhain, the night when the dead walked again.
Some later customs refer to it as Souling,
where children would offer prayers for the dead in return for a small cake. At
houses where they were refused, they would batter the door with the butt ends
of turnips. One of the earliest records of guising for Halloween comes from
1895 Scotland. A North American reference to it in a newspaper in Ontario in
1911, reports that children would go guising between six and seven on
Halloween, spilling songs and rhymes and being rewarded for them with candies
and nuts. Trick or Treating as we know it in America didn’t begin until the
1950s.
Our parents carried us door-to-door
when we were children and later, when we could walk on our own, they would coax
and encourage us to go up and ring the doorbell while they waited for us on the
sidewalk after a whispered reminder of what we were meant to say. The walk to
the porch was long to my short legs. The temperature in the air dropped in the
space between my parent and the heat behind the unfamiliar door opening before
me. After a hearty “Trick or treat!” and a piece of candy dropped in our
pillowcase we would run back to our parent, back to safe, and on to the next
home.
The first year that we went out
trick-or-treating without chaperone- our own little gang of tricksters- was an
early, and personal, rite of passage. Mom stayed home to mind the door and was
busy making sheets of homemade pepperoni pizza so it would be hot and waiting
when we came in out of the cold. We walked the neighborhood and then the same
route we walked every morning to elementary school. Up one side of the street
and home the other. It was familiar and known, but in the cloak of darkness it
felt foreign. Landmarks stood in shadow and we needed new eyes to find our way.
We were being trusted to watch out
for each other, to stay safe, to cross streets wisely and not to stray beyond
the streets we knew, or the ones we were told we could travel. As children we
didn’t realize how far the web of grown ups-who-knew-each-other spun and we
were not hip to the fact that we were never in any true danger. But that unknown is an essential element to
the rites of passage that test our mettle and help us grow. The cold leaves
crunched underfoot as we ran from porch light to porch light, pillow cases
filling fast with candies my brother and sister and I would later sort through
and trade (always setting aside some tootsie rolls for my dad).
There was one house that was always
decorated fantastically for the trick-or-treaters. And then one year, the house
was barren, the only decoration a scarecrow flopped onto the porch with a bowl
of candy in its lap. A lot of houses that closed for the night would put the
candy bowl out on the porch with a note. As we closed upon the porch, I felt a
strange feeling in my belly and I stopped. That’s
a person, I thought. I knew that when we got up there, the scarecrow was
going to grab us.
We stood still, watching the
scarecrow and debating whether or not it could be a real person. We dared
someone to see what kind of candy was in the bowl so we could gauge whether or
not it was worth it. The scarecrow didn’t move the entire time and was sitting
at a strange angle. We approached in a group and as I reached into the bowl…
the scarecrow grabbed my hand as we screamed and ran halfway back down the
sidewalk. A familiar voice laughed, assuring us it was our neighbor. We stood
our ground and made him show his face before we went back for the candy we had
earned.
There was a thrill in being able to
be brave without the need for a parent. On our own we had evaluated the threat,
calculated a plan and supported each other in carrying it out, calling on the
energies of our Other skins to aid us. On Halloween we stood in the shadow of
no one. It was always light when we started our adventure and in the joy of
running from porch to porch we would lose the subtle slip into darkness until
we were cold and tired and our bags were heavy with loot. Often, home seemed
far away. We would slip home and share stories of what we had seen on our
travels.
The next morning’s walk to school, I
was aware that the same-old route I had been taking every morning was
different. It was bigger. The houses weren’t just landmarks anymore. They were also
skins of homes with families and faces inside of them, containing other
children who thought the world was no bigger than the size of their house. On that
morning I understood the world was bigger than my house, my block, my route to
school. There was more of it than I could comprehend.
As a child, on Halloween night I
walked with demons and devils, witches, ghosts and ghouls borrowing human skin,
along with superheroes and princesses. I dared to enter dark places and
returned from them unharmed. In the turning of the world, I learned I could
enter the darkness and return. Maybe not unscathed, but I could return and know
the healing would come. Each year now, as I drop candy into the bags and
baskets of little cows, superheroes, witches and pirates, I hope they will
remember their fearlessness on this night. I hope they will remember how they
learned to move from jack o’ lantern light to jack o’ lantern light as a way as
a means to get through the darkness.
[Originally published October 26, 2011.]
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