BOULDER, CO- 

I love Halloween.

Cheap plastic costumes, sweaty make-up, canker sores on the morning after…or were those my grad school years?

When I was a kid, I was taught that Halloween was bad.  There is not a child in all of Christendom who does not understand that Halloween is the devil’s holiday.  And yet, we can’t seem to help ourselves. What kid doesn’t get off on dressing up beyond recognition so they can stuff that orange plastic pumpkin with enough candy to snuff a small, primitive tribe of diabetics off the map?  Is there anything more fun than crinkling down the street high on milk duds in a pack of underage hoodlums?  What other holiday can compete?  Sure, Christmas promises loot and yule log comfort – but does it really compare to the rush of smashing somebody’s lawn zoo to bits as swift and concise punishment for not turning on one’s porch light?

I believe that the Evangelical church suspects that the devil’s holiday might be cooler than theirs. For godly parents like mine, this is a chilling thought - droves of children traipsing through the neighborhood streets on Halloween night like they’re following the Pied Piper.  And we all know who the Pied Piper was patterned after, don’t we? The Greek demigod, Pan.  And Pan, with his hoofed feet and fancy fingerwork on the flute, is nobody if not the devil. Children follow after that sweet siren song until they ultimately meet their destruction somewhere in their teen years via drug overdose, or perhaps in their fifties in a freak beer can rumpling accident.  And all because parents give in to peer pressure and let their kids tango with the devil for one night every year. 

Sha. I’ve got chills.

Many an Evangelical child is forced to stay home to watch the festivities wet-cheeked through darkened windows – unaware, of course, that he or she has been dubbed a faceless phantom by some kid dressed as a toothless pirate and is now drawing a crowd from several blocks down.

Or perhaps they are made to go to Fall Fest.

Fall Fest involves dressing up in non-spooky, “uplifting” costumes, playing games in the church gym and going door-to-door in the Sunday school section of the church collecting candy.  Unless you’re one of the bad kids sneaking out to the church parking lot to make out with your boyfriend or down the block to get in some clandestine Trick-or-Treating, Fall Fest promises a well lit night filled with godly humor and homemade baked goods guaranteed to be as delicious as they are razorless.

Fall Fest is Halloween in a rubber.

Still, some Evangelical kids are allowed to participate.  I was, but not without a list of warnings.   In addition to the standard precautions of making sure candy is wrapped and not a courier for a needle full of poison and/or razor blade, my parents tacked a few extras onto the list, which I have reproduced here for your reading enjoyment:

1.   Make your own costume – We were not allowed to spend a dime on our costumes, which would have given fuel to the devil’s economy.  Also, it should preferably have an educational theme.

2.   Wear a coat.  I know this probably doesn’t seem that outrageous, but my mom has sort of an obsession with this detail.  It would not matter if Halloween night were a balmy 80 degrees.  The mere fact that it is in October qualifies it as a coat wearing night.  This was a particular problem the year I went as a Rubik’s cube.

3.   Accept no stickers.  Stickers might be laced with LSD.  Duh.

4.   Accept no hand stamps or rub-off tattoos.  These were treated as a potential candidate for the Mark of the Beast.  This rule also applied to marking on myself with an ink pen – or especially letting another child mark on me with an ink pen.  Even if it wasn’t the Mark of the Beast, it could be preparing me to take it, and before I knew it I would be left behind with all of the heathens under the rule of the antichrist.  “Bic – the gateway utensil to the Mark of the Beast.”  Now you know.

5.   Avoid certain houses.  There were a few on this list – they mostly involved suspected child molesters and known wine drinkers.

6.   Avoid Hell’s minions.  Do not go to any house decorated with any of the members of the hosts of Hell.  This includes ghosts, animated skeletons, vampires, or anything bearing cleavage (with or without warty flesh). 

There were a few other rules, but I think you get the picture. 

It is probably due to this list that I now make a special point of hosting an annual Halloween party at our house.  We live at about 9000 ft in the Rocky Mountains above Boulder, CO, and our house borders on Roosevelt National Forest – so we have access to infinite nighttime spookiness.  We choose a theme (Blair Witch, Monty Python, Disco, Angels and Demons, Doppelgangers), invite all of our friends, and always go on a night hike into the deep, dark woods once we are reasonably toasty. 

This year, our theme was Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales – which probably doesn’t sound that spooky until you go back and look at how macabre those stories really were.  The original Poe.  Anyhow, my guy and I dressed up as Hansel and Gretel and turned our house into the witch’s house – where we were presumably now squatting and hosting a party for nearly 70 people.

Here is a picture of us holding our 1-year-old, dressed as a gingerbread cookie.  (Our 5-year-old dressed up as a very cute little witch, but did not make it into the picture.)

Here are some photos of our lovely guests (From the Grimms’ “Cat and Mouse in Partnership”).

This is a lovely Spanish couple as Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf playing Grandma (or is he Grandma playing the Wolf?). 

Another lovely Spanish couple as a woodcutter and an angel.  (Aren’t the Spaniards beautiful people?  I want to come back as a Spaniard next time around.)

Another Woodcutter - Nigerian style:

“Maleficent,” the witch from Sleeping Beauty. (Those horns!!! She was regal!)

I don’t know what Grimm Fairy Tale had a Russian and a disco dude.  Nevertheless…

This is Maleficent, a hot disco chick, me sans wig and flush from a bit too much Napa, and an amused Hansel.  

The lovely lady on the left was dressed as a Venetian masquerade woman (without her mask here) - she was cool!

This is a crow/raven, front and back:

This is a scene from our live band karaoke, led by Mark, the bitchin’ lead guitarist on my Fender Telecaster (how come it doesn’t sound that good when I play it?) and Sal, our neighbor extraordinaire (pic’d above with Maleficent) whaling on drums.  

For some reason, all of the non-natives were really into this scene.  From left to right we have the Spaniards, a Greek, a Quebecois (in scrubs behind the Greek) and a Nigerian (inadvertently cut out of pic here).  My friend (wife of the Greek), made note that we are apparently outsourcing our karaoke now in this country, along with everything else.  I freaking love them all.  I would outsource my karaoke to them any day.

We had decorated the driveway that people had to walk up.  It’s a very long, dark driveway – about 250 feet of dirt road.  We had a witch selling apples in strobe.  Note the wine and witch combo. My mother would definitely not approve…

Here is Snow White’s coffin, I mean, glass case. 

I failed to take pics from our very dark, moonless night hike, but had I done so, you would have seen about 30 tipsy people stumbling over branches and the occasional shot of me with a flashlight on my face as I paused to tell the story of Hansel and Gretel, from Gretel’s perspective.

But perhaps the scariest thing of all the whole night were these donut holes that someone brought.  Look at the ingredient list on these! Gasp!

In case you can’t see it, the second photo below shows the underside of the box with the words “Ingredients continued from previous label.”

This list includes, “Red #3, Red #40, Yellow #5, Yellow #6, Blue#1 … 

And they look so small and innocent.

I ate 4.

Like I said, I love Halloween.

Tags: Brothers Grimm, Christmas, costumes, Devil, donut holes, Fall Fest, Halloween, Hansel and gretel, Karaoke, LSD, Mark of the Beast, Pan, Roosevelt National Forest, Spaniards, Trick or Treat, wine, witch

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 28th, 2008 at 12:15 am and is filed under Adolescence, Alcohol, Death, Debauchery, Family, Food & Wine, Friends, Hell, Holidays, Home & Garden, Lists, Literature, Music, Nature, Nightlife, Religion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.