Halloween….
When I was a kid, we assembled our costumes and were “funneled” – with our excitement and enthusiasm-out the door
My parents; all parents seemed to breathe a sigh of relief and reminded us of the time we were due back.
“I don’t want you out, running down the streets when the older kids come out!” No one worried about child abductions, or similar hazards- it just wasn’t an issue, but getting beat up by the older kids and having our candy stolen? Oh yeah, that happened all the time.
There were kids everywhere.
All running and shouting in an orgy of candy gathering.
We were carefully allowed out with a wristwatch.
And woe be he who showed up after whatever time the parents laid out as the curfew!
Still, we knew that this candy would last- if properly stewarded- until Christmas’; the bacchanalia of Christmas chocolate candy should last until Easter and then after Easter was the (free) Great Candy Drought that lasted all through the summer and into the Fall. The severity of the “drought” was leavened only by the amount of Easter candy you could gather.
Until we discovered sports, or cars, or sex, or cars and sex our world revolved around those holidays and how well we might “do” candy wise; becoming – because we had to!- candy connoisseurs or fetishists, merging an agreed upon “value” for a given candy with any affinity you, yourself felt for a certain confection in arriving at a value for a given candy bar.
This was invaluable when impromptu “meetings” took place.
They often happened on a schedule that was not discernable to us kids.
But, it was then that we had an opportunity to swap.
If you were “done” with Bit‘o’honey (the less said about the commode hugging night before last, the better), but were partial to Milk Duds. And if you were unlucky enough to seemingly have cornered the market in Bit’o’honey, your prospects were looking up. You might trade away some of the so recently noxious candy for something a bit mellower…like Milk Duds (incidentally, Milk Duds was the number two reason for “lost” fillings!- right “after “JujuBees!).
The costumes were not so “spot on” as they are now. For us it was an excuse to put on funny clothes and run with friends, feeling the joy that you might not ever feel again and “earn” candy….we’d earn it by working hard and running to each house.
Our thougyhts were something like: “You mean that if we dress up funny and run around people will give us candy?! Just like that?!”
It was an excuse for us to run wild; an excuse for the adults to give out candy to strange kids who happened to show up at their door and a wink and a nod to every parent who had a few hours of private time without needing a sitter or a hotel. In deep retrospect I wonder now what my parents made of that three or four hours alone in the house…But THAT is something best not contemplated by their children to closely.
We ran. We “earned” candy.
Everyone got what they wanted.
And this is why I believe that Halloween may be a “better” holiday than Christmas.
