A Two-fer Halloween

Hello and welcome to a spooky Saturday here at the Wannaskan Almanac. Today is October 31st. Happy Halloween.

What a two-fer of a Saturday. We get Halloween and an extra hour before the daylight saving time switch. That's pretty great. When Halloween happens on a weekday, we race home to stick some dinner in our kids before racing out to hit the neighborhood trick-or-treating circuit before it gets too dark and/or too cold and/or too snowy. (The forecast looks good for tonight!) 

On weeknights, some folks start their ghoulish galavanting as early as 4pm. I recall many a Halloween weeknight when the streets got eerily quiet and empty sometime between 7 and 8pm. I'm usually buoyed by the cheerful spirit of families and kids of all ages racing from house to house to beat the clock and ready to go well into the night. But when the porch lights are turned off, that's the end of it, so then we race home - ready or not - to get through the nighttime routine so kids can get to bed at a decent hour to be ready for school the next day.

This year, Halloween kicked off with a glow-in-the-dark dance for the middle school last night. The Youngest came home sweaty and happy from a night of goblin grooving.

The Halloween festivities today kicked off with sleeping in and lounging in pajamas. Bonus: there's plenty of time today to figure out how to embellish and upgrade the Youngest's Draco Malfoy costume with a bit more green and white for Slytherin House. Note to self: Read the fine print when ordering a costume online. I thought I had ordered the costume that included the green and white tie and scarf. (We have a wand solution.) "It's only the robe," the Youngest reported sadly, after he ripped open the package. A total mom fail, but something I have time to salvage since it's a Saturday.

I heard on the radio that Halloween is getting bigger and more festive with each passing year. This makes sense to me. Holidays like Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter are usually celebrated with family coming together. This coming together can feel stressful, forced, or strained if you don't have good relationships. Holidays linked to religion or history stir up emotions about religiosity and patriotism that fall on a wide spectrum from Woohoo! to No thank you.

Halloween is also a blast because it includes candy and costumes with no strings attached, such as prayer and parades of other holidays.

New Year's Eve is also a pretty neutral holiday that encourages get-togethers hemmed with hope and goodwill for the promise and potential of new beginnings or beginning again. But while there might be some good food, drink, and party hats, there are no guarantees like Halloween.

A person can also choose to skip out on Halloween and/or New Year's Eve, and no one's going to judge you for it.

I see on Facebook that there are more parties planned this year thanks to Halloween falling on a Saturday. While kids might not benefit from that extra daylight savings hour, I'm sure the adult partygoers are thrilled to revel in Last Call happening an hour later.

All in all, we'll be enjoying a chill(y), yet sunny Saturday getting our house projects done and costume tweaks finalized, before we switch gears for the fun night ahead.