Halloween

Wow--I guess it's been a busy semester. I was meaning to write about this much earlier.

This year was my first Halloween, which we celebrated, of course, for the kid. It was quite an evening--with a little kid the only All Saint's mass we could attend was the vigil, which finished before his bedtime, then we had to quickly dress him up and walk him over to the candy. In our town Halloween is a huge to do. A road, one of the nicest in town, is closed off, and families on that road spend hundreds of dollars on candy. The houses are decorated, the inhabitants dress up, as do the kids and adults coming for candy. We were also invited to stop in at one of my colleagues' open house on the street that evening.

I found the whole thing to be a really excellent cultivator of community--rich and poor, people of every race and religion, all came together, dressed up. There are really too few places in town where all sorts of people come together. It is an event of generosity. And the decorations were really over-the-top. It was a lot of fun.

Chester was particularly excited about an over-the-top dinosaur outfit he observed, although he was troubled by the dinosaur's lack of clothing.

He ate a little candy; I ate the rest. (Why so much bubble gum??) It was a good evening.