What I'm thinking today: Monday Moanings

A few years ago, I was in Tokyo just before Halloween and let me tell you if you love this annual celebration, this city is the place to be. It's a really big deal for the grown-ups. There is no door-to-door trick or treating, just neighbourhood celebrations in the streets and restaurants, featuring costumes and good fun.

Still, there is nothing like a Halloween in Canada! Though parties for the big kids, aka adults, are becoming more popular, Halloween remains, for the most part, a children's festival. Costumes have to be both fashionable and endurable. They have to fit over snowsuits and galoshes. They have to maintain their integrity in some of the wildest winds and torrential rains. Past years have brought rain and wind, cold and snow, and on occasion, even a balmy evening. This year's trick or treating is looking wet but not too cold.

Halloween 1987

In my elementary school days, there were no costume parades or parties yet there was no shortage of Halloween themed activities - from art and music to reading, writing and yes even arithmetic. The whole week was haunted by decorations, songs, stories, and math problems all featuring ghosts, goblins, witches and jack-o-lanterns. It was fun and a great run up for the big night.

My preferred characters for Trick or Treating were pirates, gypsies, and tramps (no thieves - lol), and the outfits were cobbled together from stuff in the house an hour or so before heading out. The one exception was the very special year my parents bought me a pirate costume. Dad made the eye patch. My Mom was not a seamstress, but she did know a thing or two about makeup. There was an awful lot she could do with a burnt cork, baby powder, and red lipstick. She also had that big jar of Pond's cold cream for getting all the stuff off afterward.

Me - Halloween 1960(?)

My mother's specialty at Halloween, at any time actually, was conjured up in the kitchen. She made popcorn balls - rounds of white popcorn held together by molasses syrup boiled to the hard crack stage. With buttered hands, so the hot syrup didn't stick, Mom quickly assembled the hardball sized treats. The hot syrup always burned her hands no matter how fast she worked.

Gone now are such delectables, even the apples and peanuts are absent from the treat bag. We've all had to buy into the commercial brands. There will be zombies and vampires out tomorrow night and probably lots of Princesses of Arendelle, but very few pirates and tramps. And it's been a very long time since I've heard anyone utter my childhood chant, "Shell out! Shell out! The witches are out!" But who can forget "Monster Mash" by Bobby (Boris) Pickett and Crypt-Kickers?!