There is so much happening between now and the holidays that I feel I’m forgetting the holidays. This morning, as I did my morning fifteen minutes of planning, I decided to skip the planning for a day and just write instead. As I sat down, butt in chair, like author’s do, and stared out my window…like authors do, I realized it will be Halloween soon.
One of my most favorite holidays of the year.
The list for that holiday goes like this:
- Buy candy
That’s it. The most important part of the holiday is obtaining yummy treat goodness to share with others. Of course there’s the dressing up part, too. Somehow after becoming a mom, that part took second place over getting those treats.
But there was this ONE YEAR…
My girls were fast approaching middle school age and absolutely wrecked because we’d moved halfway across the country. So, I needed to bring back some “normal” (HA!) in their lives. And that entailed ELABORATION! It started “small” with an idea to dress the house up like the cave of Caerbannog. (Gosh that’s a ten-dollar word I had to look up to spell correctly.)
I painted the multi-eyed monster and hid him in the bushes. Rigged up a really old stuffed animal (a small sacrifice the youngest was willing to make of her white rabbit we proceeded to gore up with red food coloring and big, nasty, pointed teethies) on a fishing line, and the fancy cake topper of it all was that I dressed up as the Black Knight to hand out candy. Yes, the severed arm and all.
We scared those poor little kids SO BADLY.
Humor was scary. HA!
The best parts of the evening were when the older kids came up and I tugged that rabbit out with my hidden arm, and they FREAKED.
Any even better, when the older kids came up and INSTANTLY recognized the monster in the bushes, the Black Knight’s costume, and started quoting lines from the Holy Grail.
Whoops, almost forgot about the Book of Armaments and the Holy Hand Grenade by the candy bowl.
To this day my oldest “themes” her house for Halloween. Two years ago, it was the Haunted Mansion from Disney with singing busts and everything. (that involved a projector and carefully crafted Styrofoam heads for the effect) The youngest takes Halloween to peak levels with a whole Halloween WEEK of costumes for each day leading up to the event. I’m very proud of their ingenuity and the joy that the holiday brings them.
And that is what holidays are about. Joy. Getting and GIVING joy, whether it is the relief after a jump scare and the nervous giggling that follows, the candy, the treats, the dressing up, or just simply looking out into the woods and taking a deep breath of crisp air and finding peace in a happy memory. Build those memories. Take the time. Enjoy yourself. That’s what they’re for. They don’t have to be perfect. They certainly don’t require being ELABORATE. Some years it was only spiderwebbing in the bushes and fake plastic spiders from the dollar store.
And candy, of course.
Speaking of treats…
(you couldn’t get through a whole blog post without something about books, sorry) I have A HUGE MONSTER BEAR of a treat coming on October 22. Bear is absolutely lovely. Scary, big, bossy, and willing to do ANYTHING for the club. Even fake-date a witch who’s cursed one of the club’s best dealers.
(Evil chuckle)
It’s not your regular Destroyers novel because I got to PLAY for this Halloween. It’s part of the 31 Days of Trick or Treat: Bikers and Mobsters collection. Find the listings here: https://caliawilde.com/31days/
