Halloween has become the bain of just about every parent's existence with children. What started off as a fun way to dress up mini-me's has become an all out sugary gorge-fest.
No? Just me?
I've written on the ways to recapture the magic of Halloween and I think that the ultimate responsibilty is on us, as adults, to create the holiday that we want to see for our children.
I offer but one example. This is not a perfection-story, but damn, it's pretty damn good.
I was over all the candy by the time my kids hit grade school. They would come home with pumpkins filled with loot that they could barely carry, then divvy it all up over the kitchen table, fight over it and then insist on trying one.of.everything that night. I was left to try to figure out what on Earth I was going to do with all the loot before it became a ginormous insulin spike. Throw it away? Donate it? Turn it in to the dentist?
One year, I revolted. I bought all sorts of bling (rings, tattoos, stickers) and put them out for kids in a big black cauldron at our doorstep (as we wandered the neighborhood with said-big-bags getting filled with sugary loot).
Wa-waaaaaa. It was a bust. I still have all that bling. Nobody wanted that. It was crap, not magic.
I turned out the lights the next year. I just didn't want to contribute to the hell that was happening in my own home. But that wasn't the type of "Be the change you wish to see in the world" that either Gandhi or I intended.
Boo. I missed Halloween: the magic, the dressing up, the being whomever you damn well pleased for the evening.
That's when I was gifted the Evil Queen costume from my Bonus-Mom and remembered the plastic cauldron I had filled with all that cheap plastic crappola 2 years before. A lightbulb went off: Poisoned Apples.
For the past 4 years now I have been the Evil Queen (think Snow White, "Mirror Mirror on the Wall"), poised over a cauldron of "poisoned apples" and I beckon children and parents alike to come and DARE to see if it is a Trick or a Treat.
It is a HIT! Kids ask their parents right away if they can have an apple, they come back multiple times over the course of the evening to have another, they ask if they can take one for their parent.
ONE CHILD declined the invitation to take an apple this year. One girl, probably 5 years old said, "Well, I don't like apples." Fair enough. The Evil Queen invited her to see if there was a real treat inside this trickery... yeah, she wasn't digging it.
And that was ok.
It was an invitation and she was totally able to decline it.
In fact, that is part of the magic of Halloween. We can make and decline invitations on the fly. After all, you're going up to a bunch of rando-neighbors' doors and HOPING they have the good stuff. It's totally ok to decline. But maybe that's another story.
For this story, it's about finding the magic for each and every one of us. I was a real party-pooper because all I saw was the sugar and of course all my kids looked for was getting candy with wild abandon. And sometimes the pain tells us something more is possible. I felt that pain for years until I just tried something new.
The best part: My friends who wanted to take a picture with the Evil Queen, with their apples. At the end of the night, the Evil Queen got spicy and she spouted a knock-knock joke to the same kids:
๐ Evil Queen: "Knock Knock!"
Them: Who's there?
๐ Evil Queen: "Handsome"
Them: Handsome who?
๐ Evil Queen: Hand some of that chocolate over to your favorite Evil Queen! ๐ ๐
They delivered, handsomely. You see, the Evil Queen had a whole lotta apples that evening too (showing kids they were not, indeed, poisoned), AND wanted to enjoy some chocolate afterall.
Because it's a part of the Magic of Halloween.
Now here's the real challenge: Halloween has just passed, you still have candy around at home (I mean, you've surely got enough for the next 3 months, right?), Thanksgiving and Winter Holidays are upon us...
What magic do you want to create, first for yourself, and then invite your kids to join?
I welcome your comments and ideas! [email protected]
Thank you to my dear friends, Hot Dog, Vampire Squishmallow, and Spiderman. You made this Evil Queen's heart melt.
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