Trick Or Treat

Driving home from Ho(t)me(n) Depot tonight, I came upon the sight of the full moon, just risen (or maybe setting), in the tops of the trees, newly bare of leaves after the wind and rain we've just had. It was a brilliant orange in the dark sky.

And of course I said out loud to no one, "It's the Great Pumkin, Charlie Brown!"

Ah, Hallowe'en.

For a significant part of my life, I would readily list Hallowe'en as my favorite holiday, bar none.

And I'm not thinking here of the gay Hallowe'en. That never moved me much. Sure, you can wrap it all up in stuff about sexual personae and masking and the illusion of surface and such, but pretty much it's an excuse for people who want to do drag but are afraid to--and probably shouldn't--to do drag. (Not that I have been totally immune to that: somewhere I have a picture of my Hallowe'en costume from my freshman year of college when I got dressed up as a vampire slut or something. Not especially successful.)

I'm thinking of the Hallowe'en from my youth.

That Hallowe'en.

Combining chocolate, scary movies on television (especially black and white scary movies, and a great costume.

And by great costume, I mean vampires, werewolves and ghosts and such. In 7th Grade, wearing my Hunchback Grave Robber Carrying A Coffin costume, I won the prize for "Scariest." And damn, you should have seen me the year I was a satyr, covering my upper body in brown body paint and waring these pants made from brown "fun fur" as haunches.

And from a verrrry early age, I put myself in charge of decorating for Hallowe'en, which was usually a euphemism for me turning the entire house into a Witches Cottage or the Lair Of The Vampire or something ("Oh the sofa? I moved it out onto the back porch because I couldn't get it to fit"). And I would raid the fields of local farmers to get corn shalks to line the driveway. All the way up.

And at church, the Young People's Fellowship would decorate the Sunday School classrooms as a Haunted House. A few times, I got into trouble for making things a little too scary for the younger kids who were our guests.

And carving jack-o'-lanterns. And all the rest.

Ah, Hallowe'en.

Every year, the day would swing around in the calendar, bringing me joy.

Thanks for putting in an appearance, O Great Pumpkin. I sure could use some of that joy now.