Halloween has been trending up this decade, benefiting from the popularity of cosplay among adults, the creative impulse for children and adults, the inclusivity in the types of costumes from superheroes to pagan, fictional characters from movies, television, picture books and internet memes and the greater awareness of not dressing up as another race or ethnicity.
This year, I noted how the candy is a metaphor for the plenty. The old adage of to each according to their need is apparent when every kid on the streets has more candy in their buckets and bags than they could eat in the next month. Once we got home, the kids counted that the pace of their haul was more than 80 pieces of candy in an hour. Some of their friends reached a saturation point, ready to go home.
They attempted to go to a few houses that were not giving candy away, which was obvious by the lack of monster and fairy tale foot traffic up and down those driveways. The houses where someone was not dispensing candy reminded me of my parents turning out the lights even though they were at home on October 31st in recent years, they turned out the lights so they wouldn’t have to open the front door dozens to hundreds of times to be told or shouted at. Last week, Dad said that he would be in the basement watching the baseball game where the television glow was unseeable from the sidewalk. His primary contribution on Halloween was being the spooky house stoking kids’ imaginations, if they considered it at all, by opting out of being one of innumerable candy dispensaries for the last night in October. Some homes are quiet on Halloween because everyone is out or off either in another neighborhood, at another house, or at work and then there are other houses that are dark and unapproachable because the people inside decide against giving candy (or apples, stickers, the Croc giblets gibbets) out to children from toddlers to teenagers along with the periodic adult who’s harnessing their inner child in a refined outfit, like the dad who was recycling (or is that Recycling?) in Friday.
Weeks ago, I sought out a merman fishtail that didn’t appear, then a week prior I began to wonder about assembling a 6-7 sandwich board, but I put on a vest and shorts, prompting the following exchange with a few teenagers:
— Are you Dipper Pines?
— Huh?
— Are you Dipper Pines?
— Who?
— Are you dressed as Dipper Pines, you know, from Gravity Falls?
—- Hahaha.
My nephew reminded me that he and his sis were Dipper and Mabel a decade ago. One lesson from the night is that I’m choosing to dress in my late 40s like they did in costume as adolescents.
On Friday, we returned home with enough energy to gemba kaizen the candy into multiple categories: chocolate, soft, sour, and a few other designations incomprehensible to me. All of that candy was a source of glee, confidence, delight, amazement. As I watched the maths whirring through their senses and the arbitrariness of pattern recognition, I imagined that hundreds of other kids were having a similar after dark experience back at home, either at a kitchen table or on the floor, spreading their haul out to see how much was there. Instead of counting, I considered how Reese’s, Hersheys, Skittles, Now & Laters, bubble gum, Twizzler, don’t need to be the only sources of endless pleasure on one night a year. Instead, I wondered when in the 364 other days of the year could we all be surrounded by so much ______ that everyone has their wildest dreams met, how there’s enough food, water, fun, clothing, books, money or jokes that the collective insatiable is sated. How do we arrive at that level of collective condition of satisfaction? Is that a singular condition or many conditions that amplify and cycle into and through each other: nourishment, connection, fun, care, mutuality?
Maybe being at Acoma Pueblo’s Feast Day two months ago demonstrated that a whole community has enough food for everyone, where anyone who casts a shadow on a doorway is welcomed inside, that there’s so much food, care, hospitality, and warmth that both of everyone’s bellies, the digestive belly and the soul belly, are filled. Where each house that participates consents to cook, share, and welcome. That Halloween is a grander version of Feast Days, albeit one where the visits are only for a moment rather than for hours, where the candy is smaller size and not nearly as vast in flavors and colors as the food of feasts. Both are experiences that diminish the barrier between private residence and private property and the roadways and walkways beyond the property line. The boundaries between public and private are more porous than most other days.
We are not practiced enough to feed and care for each other as people do on Feast Days, but what would communities feel like if once a month we were at home long enough to have friends known to us and strangers (whether they’re approaching our driveway or home for the first time or that stranger who you’ve seen a handful of times, or seen for years, but not had a reason to go introduce yourself to). We build a little bit more community by knowing the names of the people we see driving in the other lane, at the grocery store, post office, park, or store.
Halloween nurtures the webbing between us, the mycelial tendrils between families, homes, neighborhoods that, to an untrained eye, may be hard to pinpoint. But for someone who has been shown how the subtle functions, the interconnectedness is obvious. Rather than being isolating or exclusive, marred by excessive alcohol or violence, the possibilities of community writ large could occur on Winter Solstice, New Years Eve, MLK Day, Super Bowl Sunday and then Valentine’s Day and Spring Equinox after that. May Day to Memorial Day to Juneteenth. The sacred days and holidays are replete on the calendar, it’s our imagination that needs stoking so we can coordinate with our neighbors, to create the conditions for a collective offering that compels people, both known and unknown, to approach, greet, and interact. Halloween isn’t inherently exceptional, we have been too timid in applying the morals of this holiday story throughout the year.
washing dishes: a father’s glimpses 