I Explain Halloween to My Kids
Now that the boys are old enough, I told them the origin story for Halloween. This is a story that was told to me by a historian of some reputation.
Long ago, children would celebrate Fall and the beginning of the Christmas shopping season by dressing up in elaborate costumes they made themselves. The boys were shocked when I told them there were no store-bought/mail-order costumes and that the children in the Middle Ages would shear the sheep, process the wool, and knit their own costumes. Some outfits could take more than three months to construct.
On Halloween, the children would put on their costumes and walk far and wide collecting treats. The boys had a hard time understanding that the treats were either cakes and pastries or vegetables from the garden during the early Halloween celebrations. Explaining that there were no gummi worms, Snickers, or peanut butter cups elicited looks of horror. The discussion then devolved into a long tangent on the development of bite-sized, wrapped confections. Sadly, we have neither the space nor the attention span in this forum to explore this critical issue.
I told the boys how children would often trick or treat long into the night because houses, villages, and towns were spread so far apart. As dawn would break and Halloween was ending, the children would return home, dragging their bags of goodies. Some of the rich kids would have small carts drawn by dogs to carry their goodies so they could get to more houses. Most children would arrive home right around breakfast, and they would parade excitedly into the house. Each child, in order of age, would approach the kitchen table where the parents sat expectantly. With a flourish, treats would be dumped on the table, and the child would exclaim, “here is a token of my love for you.” The child would then go to their seat and enjoy a nice big bowl of November gruel before going out into the fields to work all day.
According to Dr. Clifford Claven, this is the basis for our modern Halloween celebrations. For some reason, my children are unwilling to participate in this ancient rite; maybe I’ll get more than the candy corn rejects next year.
