Happy Halloween!!

Halloween is such a fun holiday, especially for kids. Some of my fondest memories of childhood involve this day and night.

But today, Halloween seems to be getting sanitized more and more each year.

Dentists buying back candy and people giving kids toothbrushes and schools not allowing kids to dress up for school are just a few of the spoilers lurking out there.

I remember how fun Halloween was when I was a kid in the 1970s.

Our school transformed the gym locker room into a haunted house, complete with dry ice and spooky music. Kids would jump out of the lockers like mummies out of crypts.

We bobbed for apples!!

Imagine that today?!?! How did any of us ever survive childhood with a bunch of kids sticking their faces into a barrel filled with water and apples! And we didn’t bathe kids in hand sanitizer back then and somehow we made it alive!

And we were allowed to wear our costumes to class.

All day.

Today, this is a dying tradition.

Most schools have deemed it too distracting or allegedly dangerous and kids are told TOO BAD, save your costume for trick or treating.

This is so sad to me.

I remember how cool it was to set aside a day to just have fun and take it easy. We have Halloween activities and even when we had academics, our costumes never seemed to impair our ability to learn.

Today we are told kids don’t have time for even recess. And yet there is always plenty of time for radical agendas and brainwashing.

I don’t mean to imply ALL schools are guilty of this. But you are more likely these days to see a kid given a snow job on politics than a kid in a costume.

I wish I could take my kids back in time to the excitement of the toy stores with aisles lined with Ben Cooper costumes.

Those were the “old fashioned” costumes with the plastic window on the box and the mask had a rubber band stapled to it that kept it on your face.

Even now, decades after my last Cooper costume, I can still remember how the costume smelled–that magical vinyl you longed for every Halloween.

Planet of the Apes. Batman. Star Wars. Action figure heroes. The stores had them all.

And I will never forget the excitement of ringing a doorbell while my eyes darted back and forth from suspended spiders to witches and goblins peeking from the bushes or windows of decorated homes. So much fun around ever corner.

Here’s to all the kids, of all ages, out there and hoping Halloween is even half as magical to you as it was to me growing up.

I can’t wait to share the magic with our kids tonight as we take them on the traditional neighborhood stroll. The older ones are trick or treating with friends, but the day remains magical and mysterious for the younger ones. And since Gingy turned four yesterday, she is really getting into it now.

So enjoy your Halloween, everyone.

Cheers, be safe, and have loads of fun and treats.