I like trick or treating as much as the next father, but I think the real spirit of Halloween can be found by meditating on the concept of impermanence while surrounded by the dead.
To me, that’s the real scary stuff.
You’re gonna tell me that a ghoulish mask is scarier than the fact that we’re all a bunch of bones and shit that will eventually decay in the ground?
Look, I’m not a monster myself, I let my kids have their fare share of candy, as long as they understand it will be eaten in front of the grave of Mrs. Judith Ingersoll who died of consumption in 1898 and was later suffocated by her deranged husband, Thomas.
Have as many Twix as you want, just do it under a dark foreboding sky surrounded by the dead.
And it’s not like I tell them they can’t dress up either. Be whatever you want this Halloween I tell them, be a mouse, be Austin Powers, be whatever you want, but I do recommend being something that accommodates warm clothing – it gets chilly when the sun goes down in the graveyard, both physically and emotionally.
“Truth be told though,” I’ll say to them over a Reese’s Pieces, “I’m kind of hoping you’ll follow in your old man’s footsteps and choose cremation over burial.”
Then around midnight we go home, I tuck them in, and tell them to enjoy their lives. They have plenty of time to be kids before they’ll be transitioning to the next phase of existence, be it as an animal, a hell being, or a hungry ghost.
