My Roots Are Showing: Halloween A Chance To Find Youthful Joy

It was a dark and stormy night. The year was 1977. I was anxious, as I'd never done anything like this before. I steadied my feet, drew a deep breath and stretched my hand toward the door.

The hinges released a high-pitched cry as my fingertips slowly pressed against the door. It opened slightly. The room was lit only by the dim glow of a barn lamp outside the window, its light distorted by the drizzle of rain lingering on the panes.

From the shadows, I could see something was lying across my bed.

I swallowed hard. If only the bulb from my Holly Hobby night light hadn't burned out the night before, I would be in a better position to deal with the intruder.

I cautiously stepped into my bedroom. The gold shag carpet crunched softly beneath my footed pajamas. In my tiny room, I was already so near the motionless intruder that I could see the huge, glistening whites of his eyes.

As I mustered the courage to reach out and deal with whatever lay in the darkness, the beaded pony-tail holder securing one of my pig tails atop my head snapped and shot across the room.

I screamed!

Mom turned on the light as she tried to contain her laughter from the hallway.

I screamed again, this time with delight as I saw before me the very thing I'd hoped for most in all my three years. In bright canary yellow with beautiful saucer blue eyes and big floppy orange feet, there laid my first Halloween costume.

I would be Tweety Bird.

Few things in life can surpass the moments of holidays seen for the first time through the eyes of a child. Though more than four decades of Hallow's Eves have come and gone my way, I still recall the details of that costume as though it were yesterday. Who knew flammable polyester could feel that good?

And while that level of excitement might wane over the years, it's a pity to see adults forgetting how to play and ceasing to embrace those simple childhood pleasures.

Perhaps some adults get samhainophobia. Do you have samhainophobia? That's the fear of Halloween.

If you don't have samhainophobia, then tell me, when was the last time you bobbed for apples? Did you know that bobbing for apples is thought to have originated from the Roman harvest festival that honored Pomona, the goddess of fruit trees? Young single folks would bob for apples and the first to bite into a fruit would be the next one allowed to wed.

Or did you know that Celts believed "Samhain" was a night when the wall between our world and the spirit world became so porous that the souls of the dead could penetrate the wall and could come revisit their homes and celebrate the fall harvest? While some welcomed those souls, others were a bit less comfortable with the notion, so they commonly wore costumes and masks to ward off evil spirits.

Other facts you might not know:

• Halloween is the second-most commercially successful holiday. Christmas, of course, is the first.

• Approximately 600 million pounds of candy was sold for Halloween in 2012. That's a lot of tummy aches.

• The great illusionist Erik Weisz, better known as Harry Houdini, died on Halloween 1926. (Or ...did he?)

• Candy corn was originally marketed as "Chicken Feed" since corn was commonly used as food for livestock, and was sold other times throughout the year, but began being marketed as a Halloween treat after World War II.

• According to the Irish, we should be carving turnips, not pumpkins, as that's what "Stingy Jack" carried with him, lighted with burning coal, to roam the earth after neither God nor the devil would claim his soul.

As for me, I'll be celebrating Hallow's Eve in the woods this year, rekindling an old flame. As some of you astute readers have figured out and mentioned to me, yes, I've been flameless most of this year, quite by choice, mind you.

But an old friend who I've kept in contact with over the years has made a reappearance in the way only a Southern gentleman can, oozing all the charm and dash of Rhett Butler himself.

Yes, I'll admit, I like my fellas like I like my tea: strong, sweet and Southern. But I won't be bobbing for apples, just yet.

Commentary on 10/23/2014

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