Halloween 1955: A Gypsy
In the 1950s my mother stitched together loose fitting blouses and trousers from spare pieces of fabric for our Halloween costumes. The one I remember, perhaps because there’s a photo in a childhood memory book, is a gypsy’s outfit. The faded snapshot captures the dangling gold earrings my mother loaned me for the night, the lipstick and mascara she applied to my young face, my swept back hair, and my big smile.
The blouse is of a purple and mauve silken material. Of course, the black-and-white photo doesn’t show how the colors shimmered in the light and shifted like a hologram, but the effect is captured in my memory as if it were yesterday.
The other costumes I must have worn over the years escape me, though I am sure my sisters and brother and I were once ballerinas, princesses, cops, cowboys, Indians, Superman perhaps, and the obligatory Casper the ghost with eyeholes punched through a worn bedsheet.
After a night’s revelry, we’d return home to watch the last of the trick-or-treaters approach, braving the snaggle-toothed, hand-carved, jack-o’-lantern on our doorstep. Behind the half open door, a dim bulb left the entry in shadow and a ghoulish noise emanated from the house—the guttural, slow sound my father made as he stood out of sight and called, “muu-ah-ah-ahhhh.” The sound terrifies me today.
Treats filled the grocery sacks we carried from house to house across our neighborhood, and in later years the next neighborhood, and then the next. The sacks were the paper kind, brown and sturdy unless some unthinking adult insisted on handing out apples. We had no use for bulky apples. We wanted candy—Hershey Kisses, M&Ms, 3 Musketeers, Almond Joys, and candy corn.
Before bedtime, my siblings and I would inspect and compare our hauls, reveling in the thought of the sugar-filled days to come. In retrospect, I don’t remember the feast lasting more than a night or two and now I wonder if our parents winnowed the stash as we slept.
When did the magic of those crisp October nights disappear?
When parents had to accompany their children across the neighborhood for fear of what real-life monsters might be lurking in the shadows around the corner. When they had to examine the contents of every item in the sacred bags, searching for needles, razor blades, or drug-laced cookies. Or when the trick-or-treating moved to the school gymnasium, or the church, or the mall. Or when Casper the sheet-ghost would no longer suffice and only Spider Man or Wonder Woman or political figures would do. Or when store-bought masks and size-appropriate garb were de rigueur and no child dared leave home in something mom sewed.
Or when the house down the block decorated their home for Halloween with elaborate vignettes: sticky white strings draping the shrubbery, miniature goblins hanging from trees like Christmas tree ornaments (oh, please, no), witches riding broomsticks mounted on mailboxes or chimneys (my deepest apologies, Santa).
And when did adults usurp the event?
When did the empty storefronts at the mall become the seasonal shop for Halloween? When did grown men and women dress themselves in outfits a Hollywood costume designer would envy?
And why?
I don’t get it. I never have.
Thankfully, my house sits well off the street and even the most fearless zombie will avoid the long, dark driveway.
My door will be locked. And I will retreat without a costume to the kitchen, pull the Milky Way bar I’ve been saving from the fridge, and devour the chocolate covered caramel delight in a single sitting—fearing no needles or razor blades and sharing it with no one.