Haunted by Halloween

how I really feel

Oct 27, 2023

Several years ago, I summoned the courage to tell a close friend how I felt about Halloween…

“I kind of hate it.” I told her, “I wish it didn’t exist at all.”

I held my breath as I waited for her to respond. While it felt good to be honest, I had kept my feelings about Halloween secret because I felt like the only person in America who didn’t love it.

My suspicions were confirmed. My friend stared at me in shock and said, “But it’s the best holiday ever! It’s my favorite day of the year! How can you not love it?”

My heart shriveled. I felt jealous and ashamed. Because I wanted to love Halloween. Why couldn’t I enjoy something that everyone else found fun?

—

Growing up in Australia, I was barely aware of Halloween. After arriving in America in my twenties, I largely ignored it, because even though everyone referred to it as a “holiday” we didn’t get a day off work. It was just a regular day.

But, years later, as my daughter’s first Halloween neared, I was excited.

I’d bought an adorable kangaroo costume, complete with a baby joey in the pouch, for her to wear to our building’s parade. At the parade, I discovered that Halloween was an opportunity for competitive parents to show off their ingenuity and creativity through the costumes they and their children wore. I felt embarrassed that my daughter’s was store-bought, and that I wasn’t dressed up at all. And then, after my excited baby consumed more candy in an hour than she’d eaten in her entire life, a costume-destroying bathroom emergency ensued…

My Halloween dread was born.

—

My American friends got all misty-eyed when they talked about their childhood Halloweens, and I wanted my kids to have those wonderful memories, too.

But while I have enormous respect for the wildly imaginative parents who come up with genius costume concepts, I am not one of them. A creature of habit with a perfectionist streak, I thrive when given a theme, guidelines, and rules. Each year, the question of what to wear for Halloween, when anyone could dress up as anything at all, would cause my brain to freeze.

And then there was trick-or-treating, which inevitably brought the heart-stopping experience of losing track of one or both of my children in the crush of crowded, dark, Brooklyn streets, followed by a panicked search. Reunited, and exhausted, we would return home, where they would proceed to eat the mountains of candy they’d collected, and then, hyped up on sugar, refuse to go to bed. My children accused me of motherly meanness when I insisted they hand over the candy, brush their teeth, and go to sleep.

I felt like the Wicked Witch of the West.

—

As I debated whether to tell my friend all the reasons for my negative Halloween feelings, she said, “You’ve got to come sit on our stoop and hand out candy. It’s so fun. Let Jim take the kids’ trick or treating. I promise you’ll like it.”

She was right.

Jim happily took the kids trick-or-treating and I was relieved of the pressure I felt to act as a human shield amidst crowds and mayhem. The vibe on my friend’s stoop was festive and casual: I sipped an adult beverage and indulged my passion for mini-Milky Ways while handing out candy and joke treats like toothbrushes and carrots.

Best of all, as a candy distributor, I wasn’t expected to dress up, and I felt generous instead of stressed: it was fun to admire and compliment the cute and inventive costumes that paraded past.

My Halloween dread began to dissipate.

—

For years, while I kept my bad feelings about Halloween secret, they grew and festered. I had a nasty urge to convince everyone else of how awful Halloween was. My negativity wanted company. I didn’t feel good.

I told myself I hated Halloween when the truth was more nuanced. With no magical childhood memories of my own, my version of Halloween was wrapped up in expectations of motherhood.

Everywhere I looked a devoted mother – online, on TV, and in real life - was making Halloween fabulous for her kids with themed lunchbox treats, handmade costumes, and elaborate decorations. It was all in public, for everyone to see and admire.

I felt guilty that my kids wore cheaply made costumes ordered hastily online and that I could not muster any enthusiasm to decorate our apartment for a one-day-non-holiday. My deficiencies as a mother were impossible to hide.

The pressure I felt sprang from a story in my head about what it meant to be a good mother: devoted to her children, unsparingly patient and generous, indulgent, positive; and always creating cherished memories. Those feelings popped up regularly: when I wished the baby and toddler years would end because I yearned for my kids to talk in full sentences; when boredom overcame me while playing with them; and when I seethed with frustration while making school lunches. A good mother should “love every minute” of parenthood.

By honestly telling my friend how I felt, and allowing my feelings an escape hatch, I could see that it was not Halloween I hated. What made me mad and sad was my sense that by not embracing – and perfectly performing - this uniquely American hallmark of childhood I was failing as a mother.

I needed to give myself permission to be who I was: a good, but not perfect, mother who could not make elaborate costumes, found trick-or-treating stressful, and would never consider Halloween her favorite day of the year.

—

Of course, around the time I made peace with Halloween, my kids began to age out of the hoopla. They no longer spent September perusing costume catalogs; became ambivalent about trick-or-treating; and knew without being told that they needed a decent night’s sleep if there was school the next day. Suddenly, it was more fun for them to stay home, watch a Halloween-themed movie, and eat the candy they chose at the store.

Which is one of the many lessons of parenthood: just as you adapt and master one phase, it ends, and another one begins…

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