I have a love/hate relationship with Halloween.

When I was a child, I loved Halloween. A costume consisted of a plastic mask with an elastic band that tugged at your hair. The mask made your face hot, sweaty, and it was hard to see. If you were small enough, there might be a plastic one-piece outfit to wear. The masks were never frightening – a princess, a policeman, a cowboy, a wolf, a gorilla, a nurse, etc.

Everything about trick-or-treat night was simple. All five of us kids were usually bundled in coats (some of our Halloweens had snow). We wore our plastic masks, carried brown grocery sacks, and turned loose into our neighborhood with no adult supervision.

We generally stuck together, and moms and dads were happy to see us and exclaim over our costumes as we gathered our stash. There were never “tricks” other than an occasional turning on of the outside water hose of a house that was dark (my older brother).

Our parents never checked our candy, and they let us eat it until we were sick.

My teen years were a bit different. They involved running around with my older brother and friends in his old 40’s-something Ford pickup truck. The back was loaded with toilet paper and eggs. Oh, yes, we were juvenile delinquents.

Fast forward to about 1990, married, and our son being old enough to sit with me to hand out candy. It didn’t take long before he was crying, and I was horrified by the costumes the kids were wearing. They were frightening even for me. The number of teenagers trick-or-treating surprised me, and their costumes were the worst. We ended the treat giving and went back into the house.

On future trick-or-treat nights, we went to the video store and rented movies, bought an excessive amount of candy at the Dollar Store, and spent the evening with the lights out in front of the television. Our son never knew what he was missing, and, frankly, I didn’t care. We had fun on our own.  

I also have to mention that here in NE Ohio, we grew up with Ghoulardi and later The Ghoul. On Friday nights, Mom and Dad would be in bed by 11:00, and the television was ours at 11:30. These two hosts showed low-budget science fiction and horror shows with comedy skits during commercial breaks. All five of us kids were glued to the television, but not everyone could stay awake until one o’clock in the morning.

The movies were crazy scary to me – The Blob, Attack of the 50-Foot Woman, House on Haunted Hill with Vincent Price, It Came from Outer Space, The Killer Shrews, etc.

As an adult, I can’t do horror flicks. I read several Stephen King books before The Stand had me sleeping with the lights on. I swore off reading books that scared me. You couldn’t pay me to watch The Exorcist.

Today, I’m still sensitive to things I watch and read. I look away from the television when commercials for horror flicks come on, because I don’t want the images in my “stream.” They’ll show up later in my dreams.

The bottom line is … I kind of love Halloween and hate it at the same time.

When I was cleaning out our house, I dragged all the Christmas items up to my apartment and made my son go through it all. Everything Christmas in our house belonged to him. He loves Christmas and has a huge snowman collection. Even the tree was his as his grandmother gave it to him. I made him go through everything and pick out only the things that were sentimental to him. We found room in a closet for the items he wanted and donated the rest to a local thrift shop. But there was that doggone tree and no space for it. It was in my way on the living room floor for about two weeks before I decided I couldn’t wait for Christmas.

I put it up.

What about you? What’s your take on Halloween?