A Change in the Season: My Second Look at Halloween
Halloween changed for me exactly two years and one month after I had my son. For his very first Halloween, he was a sweet, fresh little newborn barely conscious of the world, and so we dressed him in a faintly bear-like winter suit and carried him asleep in the carrier from door to door. When he was one, the world was mostly still shut down around us in the pandemic, so we dressed him in a chicken costume and he went to the chicken coop to collect eggs and take some sweet commemorative photos.
The following year, though, we explained to him that he could dress up (how do you explain Halloween to someone who has never dreamed of such a wild affair), and he selected an airplane, which he and my husband manufactured out of foam, tape, and PVC tubes. He wore his best wooly balaclava and voila, an airplane. The following year he was a skid steer, which he and my husband manufactured out of cardboard, sanding belts, and mason jar lids. This approach to costuming felt like the very best opportunity for collaboration and imagination — creating something out of the seeming-nothing we had lying around, and painting it all yellow and calling it good.
It was around this time that our dear New England town started decorating for Halloween, and then I realized for the first time just how absolutely scary Halloween could be. The sign went up for the Haunted Woods Walk dripping with blood and with a skeleton to boot, and I realized how incongruous it was that my little skid steer was involved in all of this. And it's not to say that the spookiest parts of Halloween aren’t perfectly appropriate for older children and adults, because the spooky and the scary and surprises are all good and important parts of living the human experience. But what about the littles?
Enter the Storybook Walk. My son came and joined littles who weren’t yet ready for the visceral Halloween that is so readily available, and they walked through the woods discovering vignettes of imagination and wonder from childhood stories — a blacksmith, fairies in their bower, and more. Children and their families were guided down the forest path where re-creations from familiar tales were spaced throughout the forest. At the event, the children are invited to wear their costumes to join in the festivities, and families are encouraged to find that joy in creating a costume rather than buying it ready-made, where there is no "oooo what if we took this paper tube and added it here to make the exhaust pipe!" The event takes on a seasonal festive atmosphere as families gather in the autumn air, and what pride children are then able to take when their costumes are admired and complimented.
That genesis of my son's homemade costume (creativity, inspiration, and imagination) are the same motivations we foster in the early childhood experience, as well as the good foundations of the Storybook Walk and a young-child friendly entry point into Halloween. All the rest of Halloween will be there waiting for them when they are ready for it, but until that time, you’ll find us in the woods in October, discovering what story lies around the next bend of the trail.
The Young Child
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