'Tis the Season of Ghouls, Goblins, & Styrofoam Gravestones

            The Halloween season is in full swing. Lawns are scattered with scary scarecrows, wandered upon on by wicked witches, and covered from corner to corner in creepy cobwebs. Some yards set the stage for a happy haunting while other yards look like Halloween threw up.  Excited children are trying to decide what to “go as,” while perplexed parents are crafting costumes and acquiring an overabundance of candy. There are monsters, mummies, and mayhem abound.

            I find the ever-increasing amounts of Halloween decorations available to the general public to be both amazing and scary—scary in more ways than one. While many displays are brilliant, there are others that look like someone ransacked a dumpster behind a Halloween store, flung the contents all over their front yard, and then a hurricane hit. Not only are these displays potential trip hazards for unsuspecting trick-or-treaters, but it wouldn’t surprise me to ride by these places and see prison inmates—complete with orange jumpsuits and shackles—performing state appointed clean-up duty. Who knows, maybe my perfectionist nature just isn’t allowing me to see the artistic beauty of it all.

            The Halloween costumes when I was a kid were just lame in comparison to what children have to choose from today. I remember wearing stupid looking plastic masks that always had a cheap, cheesy, stretched out string across the back, which was meant to hold the mask in place but never actually did. The masks’ material didn’t breathe, and neither could I when I wore them. These days, the masks are form-fitted, breathable numbers that look like something out of a Wes Craven flick. Not only are they ridiculously realistic, but almost scary enough to make you pass out, while you’re passing out candy. At our door we see everything from precious little girls in intricately detailed princess costumes—that I’m sure their moms slaved away on for weeks—to the late night teenage ninjas who show up on the doorstep, not in costumes, but in hoodies—with blank stares on their faces—and say nothing while they hold out their pillowcases waiting for you to add to their stash.

            Most costumes are store bought, but there are many mothers who make their little monsters—I mean darlings—homemade costumes. There are two possible reasons for this: (a) they’re wonderfully creative women who can lovingly craft an award-winning costume that their children, and their children’s children, will rise up and call them crazy for, or (b) their kid couldn’t make up his mind about what he wanted to “go as,” and when he finally did, the stores no longer had it. Any time I’ve ever made my child a costume, I’ve fallen into the latter category. But either way, moms will lose sleep, lose feeling in their fingers, and lose their minds as they sew, super glue, and staple their nights away leading up to All Hallows’ Eve. Hopefully, at some point during all of this, the moms will remember to head out and get some choice candy before the stores are all out of that, as well.

            When all is said and done, no matter how messy your yard looks, how wrong your child’s costume went—even though you worked on it day and night—or how stale and terrible that off-brand candy you bought tastes, Halloween is a magical time of year for our kids. So don’t wish it away, because as soon as it’s over you’re going to have to not only deal with decorating for Christmas, creating costumes for your little devil’s—I mean angel’s—Christmas pageant, and baking a whole heavenly host of holiday cookies, fudge, and fruitcake; you’ll also need to shop till you drop, wrap till you weep, feed your family an endless amount of festively fattening feasts, and make out a colossal pile of Christmas cards.

            In preparation for what’s to come, pick up a copy of one of my books, “Christmas Madness, Mayhem, and Mall Santas: Humorous Insights into the Holiday Season,” or “The Totally Disturbing Christmas Joke Book: 100 Delightfully Demented Jokes Designed to Jingle Your Sleigh Bells,” available at Amazon, on Kindle, and at major bookstores everywhere. Both are certain to liven up your holiday season.