Whence comes my love of Halloween?

Farm land as I remember it

I dunno.  I've loved the fall for quite some time.  I remember going on walks with my parents when I was in elementary school.  I remember going through trails in woods, even in light drizzles, with the leaves crunching underfoot and all the colors.  I remember stopping by country roads and picking up walnuts to take home and shell (a brutally difficult task).  The same with getting Indian corn (shucking those kernels was another knuckle shredder).  And growing up in a small farming community, I'm old enough to remember cornstalks in the fields and bonfires and apple cider at homecoming parades. 

Later on in life, when autumn meant football and girls and new friends in the new school year, I know fall began to pick up speed as a yearly favorite.  I think in terms of autumn, it was my first year of college - perhaps one of the highlights of my youthful life - that the whole 'autumn matters!' finally came together.  

It's odd, but even as an eighteen year old, I was already developing a sense of nostalgia.  Truth be told, I always had a certain nostalgic bent about me. I think that comes from the abrupt move my family made when I was five years old.  Suddenly, the only home I could remember was gone, and we were thrown into an entirely different house in a rough neighborhood.  I remember then feeling nostalgic for those bygone days of my pre-five year old youth.

The house my Dad built by hand

But by college, nostalgia was there in spades.  I think autumn by then had become a time I was consciously aware of while it was happening.  I came to look around and 'feel' the season, the coolness of the air, the colors and foliage, the football and football season festivities - even in the pre-tailgating days.  Autumn had been there before, but it was just that season in which other things happened.  By college, it was the season in which I understood why they happened, and looked back at all the times in the past I realized they happened for the same reason.

But Halloween?  I'm sure from my earliest years it was a fun time.  Back when I was a toddler, candy was something you still only got as a rare treat.  Chips and pop (that's soda to you non-Midwesterners) were also treats.  Heck, going to McDonald's was a twice a year special treat.  Most days were the meat and potato regulars, with milk or water to drink.  So a night in which you brought an entire bag of goodies home had to be special.

And those goodies then were more than just candy.  You could get money, fruit, a popcorn ball, perhaps a little toy of sorts, or just about anything.  My sister once even got a skinless wiener.   I'll assume that last one was under the category of 'tricks.'  

One of the earliest memories I have was of Halloween.  We had moved out into the country.  It was the house my Dad built.  Next to the house, on the other side of the gravel driveway and past a line of trees, was a large open part of our yard.  Dad turned that whole acre plot of land into one big garden.  While most of the fare was veggies for the table, he also grew several pumpkin plants.  There were enough that it looked like a very sincere pumpkin patch by Halloween.  We picked our own pumpkins and carved them.  Then we drove into town and ate at the old Copper Kettle diner before embarking on the first jaunt of tricks or treating I remember. 

But I think the time in which Halloween emerged as a candidate for 'a key time of the year' was in sixth grade.  In the 1970s, you could see the rot beginning to emerge in our nation.  On one hand, I remember the adults talking about one story after another of people wanting this or that banned or made illegal.  Get kids out of abandoned lots, no more unseemly basketball hoops in pristine housing developments, stop letting kids pester people once a year on Halloween.  On the other hand, crime rates were soaring, and violence was taking on its 'random for randomness sake' that we've grown accustomed to over the years. 

In our little town, the mayor and town council took all these outcriers at their word, and my third grade year saw our town ban tricks or treats.  It was quite a downer.  Ostensibly it was because you had all the urban tales about kids being poisoned or killed by razor blades in their candy.  But skuttlebutt had it that it was really because of adults tired of being bothered by all those rascally youngsters. 

Our school dealt with this by having a lavish Halloween party.  I even took a date!  Dressed in a devil costume my Mom made, I went and had what fun I could.  But somehow I - and I think many other kids - knew this wasn't the same.  Not because there is a problem with a massive school party on Halloween night.  But because we knew it was given to us as an alternative to something else we really liked that had been taken away. 

The next couple years saw All Hallow's Eve come and go without incident, or much fun.  In fourth grade, I actually plucked up the courage and, with a friend in tow, went to our city hall (a modest structure) and asked to talk to the mayor about why this holiday was off the list.  If I remember correctly, he listened politely and respectfully, and probably told me a bunch of this or that.  I don't think it made much of a difference.

For reasons I don't know, however, a year later they announced that the next October, we would once more have tricks or treats!  Woohoo!  Or I guess.  Truth be told, I don't even remember when it was announced.  I just know that by sixth grade, I was aware we were having tricks or treats.  

Because of that, there seemed to be a bit more 'buzz' about Halloween that year.  This was even as my classmates and I pondered our age and going out tricks or treating again.  After all, most of us were only a year shy of teenager, and we didn't want to do anything that could cramp our style.  Nonetheless, when it finally came about I think many of us ended up going.  I went at the last minute, throwing together a 'bum/hobo' costume and sticking only to the street we lived on.

Other things seemed bigger that year.  There was a haunted house at our fairgrounds, and we went, if for no other reason to pester our band director who was dressed like a zombie (IIRC).  That was also the year we did the Indian Corn at home.  As usual there weren't many decorations about.  We had a couple pumpkins, a cardboard skeleton and some small decorations in shapes of witches, black cats and jack-o-lanterns. That was all.  That was all for most.  Consumerism hadn't crept into the holiday yet. 

When it was done, I went home, scoured the bag for loot - by then, mostly candy.  There was a made for TV movie called Devil Dog: Hound of Hell that was on.  Campy and silly now, but when you're still only in elementary and it's 1978, it was scary enough.  And that was it.  It was during the week - on a Tuesday I think - so bed and school the next day.

To link it to the fall season, it was in sixth grade that we went for our first 'school field trip' away from home.  For three days we went to a nearby Lutheran Memorial Camp for lessons in nature, walking through woods at night by yourself, and dealing with other kids in a cabin.  It was a very 'fallish' time, and the woods and camp had all that late autumn feel of mostly bare trees, leaf covered ground and chill in the air.  Given that it happened right after such a clear focus on Halloween again, the two probably began to merge in my thinking around that time, too. 

Therefore it was after that I began putting it all together, and seeing Halloween as 'a season', one that was somehow linked to that overall 'autumn' season I was growing fond of as well.  In fact, the one great thing about it, as I began to reflect, was that autumn meant the beginning of the great season of all kiddom, which is of course Christmas.  Back then, it was Christmas, Christmas season, and Christmas break.  

By middle school, these were all beginning to merge, and I know by high school I was starting to become aware of this, and see not only fall, but Halloween especially, as a right fun high point of the year.  That love has multiplied over the years as I made sure the family, and especially the boys, partook in a host of rituals and celebrations that they now almost demand as part of our yearly traditions.  So I suppose that's that.  Like most things in life, it's not a single here or there or this or that.  It's many things over many years that end up making a memory, or even a season of which we become particularly fond.