Categories
life

Halloween Tradition

Three years ago I would have told you that Halloween was the dumbest/worst holiday on the calendar. Two years ago I did say that it was tolerable. Last year if I had written about it I would have said that it was a really fun to go chat with our neighbors while the kids got more sugar than we would wish them to have. This year we started what we hope will become a tradition (and hopefully we’ll get it refined so that it works very smoothly for everyone) – we gave out hot chocolate as our Halloween treat. For the sake of helping us to remember the details – and because everybody surely wants to know the details of what we want to do for Halloween each year – I am writing how we made this work this year.

Laura made homemade hot chocolate in the late afternoon and we put it in a crock pot on “warm” sitting on a table just inside the front door. We placed an abundance of small paper cups there and then we went out for out round of trick-or-treating. I’m not sure we got it right this year, but the intent is for us to go early enough in the evening that we can catch the bulk of our neighbors home as we circle our block once – I imagine that over the years the kids will expand their range but for now once around that block in about an hour lets us see and talk to a bunch of people and is about enough for their attention. The hope is that this gets us home in time so that few if any local witches, ghouls, and goblins have come to our door before we return. Then we can see them (again in many cases) as they enjoy our warm offering as the evening gets colder. I can seriously envision having our children going out with friends and ending the evening with a hot chocolate party at our house.

Categories
life meta politics

Surprise Benefit

When Congress passed the measure to extend daylight savings time I thought it was a silly move. I still do. They claimed that it would save some great amount of energy while I argued that the amount of energy saved was insignificant. Honestly it is an issue  that is not worth much of a fight either way. I only bring it up now because I discovered a benefit to the extended daylight savings time – it is not dark by 6:30 on Halloween night which means that walking the neighborhood with young children is much more pleasant than it was before that change.

I forgot to mention that in my Halloween post but that is another reason that I was able to enjoy Halloween more this year. I remembered it today when I realized that I had to adjust my blog for daylight savings – I can’t wait for WordPress to fix that bug.

Categories
life

Universal Holiday Spirit

If you do a little searching here my position on Halloween could hardly be described as positive. This year as we partook of the festivities of the day I underwent a marked change in perspective. We spent a couple of hours walking around our new neighborhood with the kids. The older two would run from house to house gathering more goodies than is good for them and the younger two would generally try to keep up, but they would stay back with Laura and I as we enjoyed conversations with many of our neighbors. We would then hurry three or four houses forward to catch up with the older girls (who would have gathered candy from the intervening houses not only for themselves, but for the younger two as well) and talk to another neighbor.

After this year, I sitll don’t care about Halloween as a “dress up and gather/distribute candy” activity, but I sure enjoyed it as a “get out and talk to friends and neighbors” activity. Unlike the last couple of years we were also blessed with perfect weather this year – this is the kind of Halloween that I can enjoy, and I hope to bring this attitude into future years.

Categories
life

Halloween

Last year I decided to write about my perspective on the major holidays of the year. I got the idea before Halloween but decided to wait rather than start on a negative note. It may be a good thing that I did because my perspective has changed regarding Halloween since last year. A year ago I would have written that it was a waste of a holiday that should be ignored. That was before I had my first Halloween in my current neighborhood (we moved in soon after Halloween two years ago). Now I have decided that Halloween is tolerable because I have a neighbor who has a tradition of making homemade doughnuts on Halloween – that’s worth celebrating.

I don’t mind the cute kids costumes now that my kids are enjoying it more – but I still don’t go for the dark stuff like bloody knives and characters from horror films. I can also pass on the annoying things like walking through ridiculous tangles of fake spider webs.