Trick-or-treating to Grandmother's house

Well, she couldn't quite make it to Grandmother's house: one lives about 150 miles away and the other, more like 350 miles. But Little Red Riding Hood and her Big Bad Wolf (who suffered the indignity of meeting his most macho dog friend dressed in a nightgown) did make their way around town for their first Halloween outing tonight. If the Halloween marketers have successfully drawn adults into the celebration of this holiday in the last decade or so, they also have extended their reach in the other direction and enticed parents to dress up infants. The babies may have no idea what's going on, but create a handful of cozy, adorable, full-body suits for $20 a pop, and parents can't resist.

Edith's costume was homemade, though. Halloween was a big deal in our household growing up, but as with Valentines, costumes had to be made at home to be legit. Not that we kids made them (at least, not until we were eleven or twelve). Whatever the virtue to be learned from homemade costumes, it was not self-reliance or humility. Peter and I were spoiled to have two wonderfully creative designers and seamstresses in my mother and grandmother, and so we always headed out in style.

I was a bit panicked this year to realize that the onus was now on my shoulders: somehow, like those who buy a home and suddenly are supposed to be handy with a paint roller or extension ladder, I suddenly had to be the creative costume designer. Luckily, I had a couple of fairy godmothers. Edith's Grandmother Jennifer supplied the idea, and her Aunt Janet made her the red cape. The rest we were able to piece together.

We hit three neighborhoods. First, we waited at home in our new seminary neighborhood to hand out candy to other kids. But the scene was dead, so we headed off to our old university neighborhood to visit specific friends. Along the way Little Red Riding Hood made her call on the sickly lady: our friend Lori had surgery on a broken foot today, so we dropped off some soup and bread. Lori is Senora Hartshorn in her day job, and she sang Edith a song about Caparucita Roja before sending her along her way.

We had a good time in the old 'hood before returning home to discover that the trick-or-treating scene starts later over here. The place was hopping. There looked like a good number of homemade costumes. And we were impressed that having left a bowl of candy and raisins on the stoop when we went out, it still had candy in it when we returned--but no raisins.

Even so, the trick-or-treaters weren't good enough kids for our next-door neighbors. They are the only people in our building we haven't really met; they seem scared of Bismarck and tend to keep to themselves anyway. As we came up the stairs to our apartment, a crowd of kids was knocking at the neighbors' door. The woman opened the door and proceeded to hand out candy, but she delivered it with a lecture: "You shouldn't be doing this. Halloween is not a Christian holiday. You should not celebrate it. Go home." I'm not sure how effective that message is if you deliver it along with the goods.

Personally, I was relieved to find that a seminary neighborhood today is still a lively Halloween scene: that we haven't become so censorious of some of the roots of the occasion that we have to keep children from donning costumes, visiting their neighbors, and enjoying getting a bit scared. It's possible to object to elements of all holidays. The university daycare center actually makes a policy of celebrating no holidays, because people have objected to some aspect of each one. I'm glad that Edith will be attending the seminary daycare instead, which held their annual Halloween parade last Friday: childhood would be a far less colorful place without each season's peculiar festivities.