Halloween and my Grandfather

[chrisfs]

I was talking to my grandfather about Halloween. He said that when he was a kid (in the late 1920's ), their Halloween would go like this. There were no commercial costumes, if he wanted to go as a hobo, he would take a piece of rope and tie it around his pants as a belt and then burn a cork and use the dark ash to blacken his face and arms. If

Comments

[kid_lit_fan]

My dad (who was a kid in the late 30's, early 40's) also remembers homemade treats and costumes, though there was commercial candy available.

By the time I was a kid, everyone was too paranoid to accept homemade treats. I don't think there's EVER been a substantiated case of razor blades in apples, but my parents believed in it, and they wouldn't have dreamed of letting me accept a popcorn ball or unwrapped candy, unless we knew the giver well.

And now, a lot of places have trick-or-treating at the mall, or trick-or-treating in a commercial neighborhood by day. Really? To me, a big part of the point was to get to go out at night, and, as a parent (I think I have one more trick-or-treating year left), to get to see people's living rooms!

One of my best moments as a mother was when I took Catherine to a daytime event in her homemade Po (from Teletubbies costume (every child who came in costume got a free pumpkin). A little boy said "Daddy, look, she's Po, too." Daddy said "Yes, you were Po last year." Turning to me, he said "