Is it just me?

I didn’t grow up with Halloween. The Hungry Ghosts Festival, yes, but not Halloween. So when I married my Minnesotan husband and moved here, I announced I would not hand out candy. The whole idea of encouraging kids to hoard candy just seemed….wrong. I mean, isn’t this country in the throes of an obesity epidemic? At least with the Hungry Ghosts, it’s the ghosts that you offer sticky gummy treats to so their teeth stick together and they don’t carry tales of your misdeeds up to the gods in heaven. Or something like that. I may have gotten my Chinese folk tales mixed up.

For our first Halloween, I decided this household would give out dried fruit instead. My husband slapped his forehead and worried we would be ostracized. Then I found out how much dried fruit costs. That put an end to that idea. When the time came, I meekly doled out M&M’s and mini Mars bars.

And then there’s all that money for costumes that kids only wear once. Maybe I should have a better attitude, like Kay. Last year, the cow suit I grabbed for my two-year-old at Target last was too small (check out the stretched fabric around her butt). What do you mean why didn’t I return it? Who has time?? Though said costume did give me the opportunity to use this line to excuse myself early from last year’s Halloween block party: “My cow has gone home….”

And now I read that Halloween’s become a shopping season in its own right. Holy Hungry Ghosts!

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 26th, 2006 at 10:02 pm and is filed under Holidays, Main, Rants. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.