boo

Even though the first day of Fall was several weeks ago, October is when Fall really starts in my mind. September just doesn't cut it. October also ushers in the Halloween season - a long time favorite of mine. When I was little Halloween was undoubtably my favorite holiday. I would spend a month thinking up the perfect costume, picking out all of it's pieces and trying the stuff on to "practice." When the day finally came I was delirious with excitement. I vividly remember running through the neighborhood until the porch lights started to go off, begging my dad for just one more street. And even though I was very sensitive to scary things (I still am, I can't even watch scary movie trailers. The channel will be changed) I never associated Halloween with fear, just fun.

But part of me, I guess more so now that I'm a parent, wonders if those weren't simpler times. The Halloween decorations I see these days is more about brutal, bloody, gory death, and all of it's various aspects, than the carefree "spookiness" that I remember. The most blood I ever remember associating with halloween was a small dribble that my mom painted on the corner of my mouth when I was a vampire one year. Otherwise, it was all about witches (i loved the green facepaint), and clowns (cute ones, not creepy ones). Decorations were toothy jack-o-lanterns, paper skeletons hanging on doors and those cotton spider webs in peoples bushes. Sometimes there was a tombstone if people wanted to be extra scary. But now, I walk through the isles of Target and it's like Texas Chainsaw Massacre just exploded. And those Halloween stores that set up shop starting late September are even worse. Why does anybody need a bloody corpse to hang from the tree in their front yard or a life size replica of someone getting dismembered with a cleaver? 

I know, I'm being prudish. It's a free country and people can decorate their yards how they want. Kids will be exposed to death eventually anyway. I'm just being super over protective. Blah blah. Yes, kids will eventually have to learn about death but I'd much rather it be a discussion we have over the demise of a goldfish than me having to try to explain that the life size decoration of a man with his throat slit gushing blood is just pretend and it's "all for fun." Spiders and pumpkins and dressing up is fun - bleeding out your jugular is not.

acceptable

unacceptable