Halloween Traditions?

Halloween Traditions from Timothy Koide on Vimeo.

I grew up in a home without too many family traditions. At Christmas, we would eat a roast. At Thanksgiving, a turkey. On Easter, a leg of lamb. On Halloween, candy. No special games, no traditional song, no candle lighting. We're pretty boring. Occasionally, we engage in gratuitous laughter at the expense of someone else in the family. By that I mean, my brother and I are provoked into laughter by one or the other of our parents doing something that an individual qualified for AARP membership would do. But, that is not a tradition as much as it is a fact of life.

I guess all of our family traditions (as cliche as they are) really revolve around food, processed gelatin, and high fructose corn syrup (are the latter two items considered food?). Indeed, this phenomenon describes much of the cultural landscape of America. So it is no surprise that my Halloween experience this year, despite living 3,000 miles away from my parents, was again centered around another deleterious nutritional practice--making and eating caramel apples. Thank you Santos family.

What are your Halloween stories?

These are late additions, but here are a couple of memories from the annals of our collective experience.

This Halloween memory is based in Beijing, China, in the small community of River Garden Villas, where foreigners from all over the world live. One Halloween night in 11th grade, Samantha Dickens and I decided to pretend that she was a murderer and I was a victim. I would start to walk down the street, and suddenly begin to warily look behind me. Sam would begin following me, hunkering her shoulders down, quickening her pace, and leering at me with a threatening smile. I'd start walking faster, looking at her behind me with a panicked look. She would then start laughing and running after me. I would oblige her and start to scream hysterically, running as fast as I could down the packed streets of kids. Sam then tackled me and started to punch me (fake punching) and then I'd lie there still while she laughed manically and then run away. We did this a few times, with surprisingly little response from onlookers. The third time a woman came up to me and ask me if I was okay, which for some reason really embarrassed me. I hopped up, and was like, "yeah, of course!"

So weird. High school.

One more memory:

For a long time I was obsessed with hoop skirts. This obsession probably stemmed from Belle in, Beauty and the Beast. When I found out that they (hoop skirts) actually did exist in colonial times, I wanted one so bad. So, for Halloween in fourth grade, I wanted to be a hoop skirt girl. My parents and I went to a local thrift store, and pawed through the old skates and smelly suit jackets and found the perfect paisley lace- up- the- front dress for a hoop skirt dress. I went to school the next day, and when I got back, I looked up at the ceiling (where my parents had hung the dress from the lights to make the hoops for the hoop skirt part) and there it was, all ready and made. They had made huge circles out of thick wire and had sewn them to the bottom of the dress. It was perfect.

I loved it. I wore it to school for the Halloween parade, and was so pleased with it. That night I went trick or treating in it, and my overzealous- for- candy- friend, Caroline Weitzman, accidentally stepped on my skirt and dislodged one of the hoops, causing it to drag out from behind me for the rest of the night.

It was a great costume, but also a sad ending.