You know what’s Crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy!
Halloween is approaching.
“What are you gonna be this year?”
“Huh?”
“There’s a party, you going?”
“Isn’t it still summer?” you think.
And that’s when it hits me.
Summer is gone. The grass is not growing. The leaves are changing. The skies are darkening. People are wearing more fabric in their wardrobes.
It’s fall.
And with fall comes the 1st calendar symbol.
Like a quarter pole at the Kentucky Derby, Halloween is now just 2 weeks away.
Wasn’t I just at the pool?
Wasn’t it just Labor Day.
And Halloween is more than just Halloween now–a-days.
Halloween is life, a party, a religion.
Americans now celebrate Halloween as if it’s the 8 – days of Hanukkah.
When did Halloween become so revered? So labor intensive? When did a celebration symbolizing the harvest become a night to wear Frankenstein masks.
It use to be pumpkins and candy and incessant knocks on the door by midgets wearing Wonder woman costumes. It was the The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown and a bag of Snickers Bars.
By 9pm it was done.
Now it begins in mid-October and can even languish a day or two into November.
That’s Crazy!
Are we Wickans howling at the full moon? Is Halloween the New Christmas? Should we nail Hershey Bars to the mantel and leave fertilizer pellets for the Great Pumpkin.
Honestly, on a slightly smaller scale, Halloween has become the greeting card, social event, commercialization of Christmas.
Was a pumpkin messiah born in a manger under a blinking bat inside of a haunted mansion. Did someone forget to tell me about this growing up?
My kids sure think so.
HALLOWEEN has become an official holiday.
I use to think it was just a couple hours on the 31st of October.
Then it became a Hallmark holiday where cards and streamers seemed appropriate.
Then the Candy Lobby started banging the steps of Capitol Hill and BAM! TRICK O TREAT MO FO!
It’s all ORANGE AND BLACK all the time!
It’s a multi billion dollar scam. It starts with picking a costume that all cost 50 to 100 dollars. Sexy Nurse for the Misses. Crazy Hobo costume for the recalcitrant teen. Semi sexy witch for the young daughter.
Add sprays and paints and leggings and glow sticks and you are $250 dollars in the hole. Then you add 20-pounds of chocolate, enough to make Kirstie Alley uncomfortable, and you might as well take a 2nd out on your house.
My kid was thumbing through a 1/4 inch thick Halloween magazine the other night preparing his foray into the grand event.
He thumbed through each page imagining what it would be like to be a werewolf? a Ninja, a Commando.
Then on page 43 he says; “”I want to be a mad scientist dad.”
“Yeah,” I’ll respond coolly. “Well you had better go to the junk drawer and pull out a pillow case, some rubber bands and a can of WD-40. Good Luck.”
When I was a kid, we never bought a costume. That was for losers. If you had any Halloween integrity you made your own costume. It was a challenge to transform a dish rag into something memorable.
Back in the day, you learned how to turn a sheet, a marking pen and a belt into the Michelin Man.
I watched a friend take a thimble and a close pin and become the Wizard of OZ. I’m talking Toto, the Tin Man, the Lion, every damn character.
Now kids dress up in whatever the party shop is selling. The creativity level has eroded. I think the drop in Halloween originality is directly proportional to the time a child spends in front of the Playstation mind machine!
My kids are all ready asking me to start decorating the house.
Decorate the house? When the hell did this become such a labor intensive holiday? When did it involve getting the ladder and hanging blinking lights and flying bats and things that go bump in the night. When did I lose an entire Saturday decorating for a day that some say celebrates Satan? Back when I was a kid, decorating the house meant running the vacuum cleaner by the front door so that when kids knocked they thought the entire house was clean. Decorating? are you kidding me?
My kids love Halloween like a goat likes tin cans. But I’m the one who has to hang the witch on the front door and lay the skeleton dude in the front grass. I have to string up the lights and get the fog machine oil ready by the front door.
Do the kids thank me? NO.
They’re too busy watching reruns of the Fresh Prince of Bel Air to be troubled with any of this.
Think I could get a “way to go dad” during the commercial of NCIS.
Halloween has become a social extravaganza. Parties have always been fashionable, but it seems like the revelry is more intense and the sexy witch costumes shorter than ever.
I’ve been to the Mother of all Halloween parties in Austin, TX.
All I can say is HOLY GREAT PUMPKIN CHARLIE BROWN!
If you have been there, then you know what I am talking about. 30,000 co-eds prancing around with whiskers and a cotton ball hanging from their ass.
That’s about all I can remember on that one.
This new generation responds to Halloween like drunken Mardis Gras revelers respond to shiny beads.
All I can say is, Halloween; you’ve come a long way baby!
Life’s Crazy™