I Freaking Love Halloween! (Part One of Two)

Most who know me are well aware that Halloween is one of my favorite holidays. I love everything about it! Most people will be quick to assume it’s simply because of Trick or Treating but that couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, I don’t remember much about trick or treating from my youth since I was banned from the activity after fifth grade by my parents who thought after elementary school I was too old to go around the neighborhood begging for candy. You would have thought that could have immediately deterred me from loving Halloween, but even as a child I found new ways to celebrate. All through middle school I went door to door collecting canned food instead of candy for a local food drive and every year in high school my friends and I threw house parties. (Not the kind with keg cups and drunken closet groping but more candy corn and scary movies – yah, my friends and I were late bloomers to the party scene. Fine by me, we made up for lost time real quick in college!)

Every year I embellish my apartment (or parent’s house back in the day!) from head to toe with every decoration imaginable. I hang the spooky colored lights (orange and purple tiny lights or the ever popular glowing skulls), stretch huge spider webs in corner adorned with plastic spider rings, hang ‘creepy’ tissue paper ghosts, play haunted music soundtracks, etc. You name it, I have done it. One year my dad and I even painted fake tombstones to put in the front yard with family members’ names and described them as dying in total freak accidents. Mom wasn’t too appreciative of that one. Another year dad and I rigged the garage door to remain open and my dad slide under it to look as if it had closed on him and killed him. When neighborhood children came up to our house to check on him, he would jump up and scare them while chasing them down our driveway. Mom really didn’t appreciate that one.

Thank goodness I have found someone who appreciates my love of Halloween and embraces it as much as I do (well, maybe not as much, but certainly he gets more into it than most!) Just another reason why I love Brian! Anyway, this is our first Halloween living together and we have decided to begin the decoration process early. We got huge window light up displays of a ghost and skull to hang from the upstairs windows and gooey ‘bloody’ hand prints to smear on the bottom ones. We have glow in the dark decals and orange lights to string up around the front door. Our coffee table is covered with pumpkin, spider, and creepy skull candles and I plan on getting a huge thing of spider webbing this weekend. It may not sound like much, but decorating ‘our place’ feels amazing since living together is still relatively new plus it makes it feel a bit more like home.

Pumpkin carving is a big deal every year too. My favorite is to go to a pumpkin patch and tromp thru mud selecting the perfect pumpkin to take home as a souvenir for your effort. But I will easily settle to pick a pumpkin out of a bin at the local grocery store. I have thrown a yearly pumpkin carving contest for several years (my poor parents were forced to ‘compete’ against me even as a child!) and has become more elaborate has time has gone on. First, it began with the simple ‘Best Pumpkin’ contest. Now a theme is voted on prior to the event and we try to keep it original every year. Back in college, we had a ‘sex’ theme and each pumpkin had to incorporate a sexual position or act carved into the pumpkin. The next year we had a ‘swear word’ contest where you had to carve a bad word somewhere into the pumpkin. Last year, we had a ‘wrong holiday’ theme where everyone carves the wrong holiday scene into the pumpkin; for example my friend did a leprechaun for St. Patrick’s Day and I carved Jesus carrying a cross to celebrate Easter. There is no prize involved; all participants strive to take home the pride associated with the win. But the winner does usually get the last beer in the fridge out of respect.

Tomorrow I will write about my absolute favorite aspect of Halloween: the costumes! I already have mine figured out but Brian is still stuck. Any suggestions I can pass on to him?