The turnout for Halloween trick-or-treating this year was the most we've ever seen here. We actually ran out of candy! Usually we have tons left over.
The thing is, though, some kids around here don't really get Halloween. It's kind of a weird holiday, I know, and because of its macabre nature, many Muslim families do not allow their children to participate (heck, many families of lots of religions do not allow their children to participate, now that I think about it). As I sat on the patio, handing out the candy, there were many, many children (and pushing-teenagedom "children") who came up to me and held out plastic shopping bags, not even saying Trick-or-Treat. It's as if they got the message that there was a strange American holiday where your neighbors gave out candy, but they missed the part about dressing up in a costume. It's an understandable mistake.
For example, a little Arab girl came skipping up all by herself. She wasn't dressed up. I asked her where her costume was (look at me, all curmudgeonly, sitting on my porch, practically kicking kids off my lawn). She said, "oh, I'm just on my way to a friend's house and I thought I'd trick-or-treat on the way." OK, then!
Here's what the Palmer girls came up with. True to form, they vacillated on what they wanted to be right up until it was time to get ready. We came up with Magdalena the ghost:
and Miriam the Bellatrix Lestrange, complete with historically accurate 12-inch wand (we looked it up).
The thing is, though, some kids around here don't really get Halloween. It's kind of a weird holiday, I know, and because of its macabre nature, many Muslim families do not allow their children to participate (heck, many families of lots of religions do not allow their children to participate, now that I think about it). As I sat on the patio, handing out the candy, there were many, many children (and pushing-teenagedom "children") who came up to me and held out plastic shopping bags, not even saying Trick-or-Treat. It's as if they got the message that there was a strange American holiday where your neighbors gave out candy, but they missed the part about dressing up in a costume. It's an understandable mistake.
For example, a little Arab girl came skipping up all by herself. She wasn't dressed up. I asked her where her costume was (look at me, all curmudgeonly, sitting on my porch, practically kicking kids off my lawn). She said, "oh, I'm just on my way to a friend's house and I thought I'd trick-or-treat on the way." OK, then!
Here's what the Palmer girls came up with. True to form, they vacillated on what they wanted to be right up until it was time to get ready. We came up with Magdalena the ghost:
and Miriam the Bellatrix Lestrange, complete with historically accurate 12-inch wand (we looked it up).