It's Halloween, and I've spent the evening watching the Frank Langella Dracula film, a useful reminder that what seemed dark, gothic, seductive, and vaguely dangerous in 1979 can look surprisingly slow and underlit nearly fifty years later. Apparently, immortality is easier to achieve than pacing.
Meanwhile, the trick-or-treaters are making their rounds. There's been an interesting demographic shift this year. Almost no little kids. Mostly middle school and high school students, many of whom appear to regard Halloween as a federally protected right to acquire free candy until the age of twenty-three.
The most unsettling costume to appear at the door was an SS Nazi uniform, which managed to out-creep
Dracula by a considerable margin. I didn't ask questions. I just handed over the candy and silently hoped this wasn't a school history project that had gone badly wrong.
We're up to about thirty visitors since dark, which seems low for a Saturday night. Then again, the forecast is calling for rain later this evening. Yes, rain. In the desert. During a drought. Apparently even the climate has decided to celebrate Halloween by showing up dressed as Seattle.
I've always loved Halloween. Costumes. Carving pumpkins. Scary movies. The annual opportunity to consume industrial quantities of sugar while pretending there won't be consequences.
What I've increasingly found myself wondering, however, is what Halloween actually is.
Around here, it seems to have split into two parallel universes. In one, "Fall Festivals" have replaced Halloween because some evangelicals are convinced that dressing as SpongeBob SquarePants is the first step on the road to devil worship. In the other, "Trunk-or-Treat" events have children traveling from SUV to SUV in carefully supervised parking lots while parents monitor the proceedings from folding chairs. The message seems to be: "Candy from strangers is dangerous. Candy from strangers standing next to a Honda Pilot is perfectly acceptable."
Neither version appears particularly concerned with the fact that Halloween originated, at least in part, as an acknowledgment that people die.
I'm not complaining. Well, not much. It's just fascinating to watch traditions evolve. What began as a recognition of human mortality turned into neighborhood children wandering the streets disguised as monsters and demanding candy. Now it involves organized traffic flow, risk-management protocols, volunteer coordinators wearing reflective vests, and enough adult supervision to launch a lunar expedition.
Of course, every generation reinvents its holidays. The Victorians turned Christmas into an elaborate family celebration. We turned Halloween into a cross between a parking lot management exercise and a municipal liability workshop.
Still, I'm enjoying the evening, the occasional ringing doorbell, and the annual reminder that culture is never static. Whether this represents progress, decline, or simply another chapter in humanity's endless ability to over-organize everything remains an open question. I'll leave that debate to future historians. Assuming, of course, they can find a parking space at the Trunk-or-Treat.
