Halloween

I do hope I can entertain sufficiently in one blog post to make up for the lack of a post last week. At least this time around I had a very easy time deciding on a topic.

Everybody knows about the history of Halloween--about All Hallow's Eve and Samhain and so on, and the dressing up as harmful spirits in order to fool potential real harmful spirits into leaving you alone--so I won't go into detail about it here. I'll talk instead about how I've celebrated it, in the great narcissistic tradition of bloggers everywhere.

I grew up around Baltimore, and my first real exposure to Halloween American-style was in the mid-eighties. Back then, shop-bought character costumes didn't consist of foam-padded muscles and syndicated Disney princess outfits: they were comprised of 1) a very thin and extremely fragrant mask of the character's face and 2) a vinyl smock on which a picture of the character was printed. Even at six or seven this struck me as a funny way to go about dressing up as somebody.

As a small child I was very much into Warrior Women and She-Ra and similar, and my Halloween costumes for several years centered around a treasured plastic She-Ra sword that glowed in the dark and had little sparkly stickers on the hilt to indicate inlaid gems. Each year I'd put something together from items we already had in the house or that my mother made for me (a bright pink knitted tunic, one year, stood in for chain mail in a knight costume) or that some kind friend or family member had donated. I remember being Morpheus (Gaiman's character; this predated the Matrix by quite a few years) and, not owning a long black coat, having to borrow a friend's mother's black plastic raincoat. This is of note simply because I find it difficult to remember there was a time before I owned a long black coat of any sort.

In college, I was pleased to learn that dressing up for Halloween was not only considered acceptable, it was considered a serious undertaking for which great preparations were required. My finest hour was definitely the time I dressed up as a Random Masquerader from Labyrinth along with a great many of my friends as more recognizable characters from the movie. I didn't have a dress as gorgeous as the girl playing Sarah, or pants as fabulous as our Jareth's, but I did have several pounds of fabric paint, glitter, gems, and silver-blue lamé whipped together into an outfit that crossed Ice Capades Barbie with Catwoman. It was great fun and took me about a week to make.

That was really the pinnacle of my Halloween experiences. Since graduating from college I've not spent much time or energy dressing up; as one nears thirty the idea of trick-or-treating (or trick-or-beering) becomes more and more ludicrous, and anyway who has the time to put into a truly memorable costume? But despite my lack of active participation I love the holiday, and I enjoy watching people get dressed up and strut their stuff at work, at parties, while handing out candy. I love the pumpkin carving and the silly fake spiderwebs and the feeling of excitement that still hasn't gone away after all these years.

What will you be doing for Halloween? And who will you be dressing up as to do it?