When I Trick-or-Treated

When I was a little girl my friends and I would dress up in our favorite kids Halloween costumes, and take pillow cases out to trick-or-treat. We would run as fast as we could from house to house collecting as much candy and treats as we could before it was time to go home. Of course some of our favorite candies never even made it to the pillow case. What fun we had! When we got home we could hardly wait to dump the content of our goods onto the bed, or kitchen table to see what we had gotten. Then we would share with our family and trade with our brothers and sisters.

We were innocent. It never crossed our minds that someone would try to hurt us. Then came the time that we couldn’t eat anything until we got home. Then our bags were dumped out and sorted by our parents. Anything that was not prepackaged or was torn got thrown in the garbage. Everything else was checked to see if it could have been tampered with in any way before we could have it.

By the time my children were old enough to trick-or-treat I didn’t feel it was safe to go door to door. Our mall had trick-or-treating. So our children would dress up in their favorite kids Halloween costume and we would go to the mall.

Churches were a good alternative to trick-or-treating. They would hold what was usually called a Fall Festival, and have candy, games and activities for the children.

Local Halloween costume parades are also popular. Children dress up in their best kids Halloween costume and try to win the 1st place prize.

Usually schools have afternoon Halloween parties and encourage the class to dress up in their favorite kids Halloween costumes. As time went by the children were encouraged to dress up as storybook characters rather than monster characters. I was surprised at one particular party at my child’s school. I had made pumpkin and ghost cookies and was passing one of each out to the children. One of the children told me he was not allowed to have a ghost cookie so I gave him two pumpkins. Being the germ conscious person that I am all the cookies were individually wrapped in baggies, and the teachers and parents loved it.

This is about the time we started having yearly Halloween parties. We asked all the children to dress up in their kids Halloween costumes and come to our house.

The preparation was so much fun. We decorated the house, carved pumpkins, and made home made cookies in the shapes of pumpkins and ghosts. We had hot dogs thinking this would be somewhat better than just eating junk all day. The candy and prizes were in a pinata for the children to break. We played Pin-the-Nose-on-the-Pumpkin, had a bean bag toss with our homemade beanbags, and threw real darts at balloons (What was I thinking?)

Bobbing for apples is also related to Halloween. I remember doing this as a kid and had great fun. As a grown up it seemed to be nasty and nothing but germs. So for our Halloween parties we would tie apples to a string and clip them on something like a clothesline. Everyone had their own apple to catch from the string with their mouth.

Not only did the kids have fun at our Halloween Parties we all did. These made great memories that are still talked about today.

By Gaye Brownie

http://www.butterflybabiesboutique.com

http://www.butterflybabiesboutique.com/kids_halloween_costumes

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