Who remembers those cheesy Halloween costumes? You know, the ones with the plastic outfits and paper masks with eye and nose holes and little slits for your mouth? Those were the bomb when we were kids, right?
You could dress up as your favorite superhero like Batman or Wonder Woman.
Or how about a character from the latest hit movie or TV show like C-3PO from Star Wars or Casper the Friendly Ghost.
We all loved to pick out our favorites and couldn’t wait to get home and open that box to try it on. I’ll bet you wore yours around the house for hours until your mom finally made you put it back so it didn’t get ruined before the party at school a few days later.
You tried to keep your costume choice a secret because you just knew that out of all your friends you’d have the best one! You made your mom drive to the store way on the other side of town because you were sure they had a different selection to choose from.
When costume party day finally arrived, you discovered that the kid sitting in the third row second from the window had the same costume as you! At first you were kind of bummed out but then you realized, looking at all the other costumes in the room that day, that that costume – YOUR costume – was the best looking one there and you loved the fact that not only were you wearing it, but you got to look at it too and that made you smile!
Fast forward 30 years and Halloween costumes, for kids and adults, look a lot different.
Your kids probably look forward to the costume party day at school like you did, and they probably take just as much time and effort choosing their costumes. If they ask you to drive to the next town because there might be something different to look at, you grin and fondly remember asking your mom to do the same thing!
For kids today, not a lot has changed in the way they feel about Halloween. For us as adults though, we see the holiday in a whole different way. Some of us still dress up and take our costume choices seriously. Some spend hours making their costumes and some decide to purchase theirs.
Either way, there’s still the fun of dressing up for a night and going out to a party to celebrate the night with friends.
How do we like to spend the holiday? Neither of us takes the idea of dressing up too seriously, and we each have our standard go-to ideas that are fast, easy, and pretty inexpensive to pull off. Comfort is a big factor in the decision making process too. Once we have donned our costume of choice for the night, we like to go to a friend’s house and pass out candy. If the weather is cooperating we’ll have a small fire pit in the front yard and of course some creepy music and decorations to set the mood.
We’ll hang around drinking hot cider and wait for the kids to start their endless parade through the neighborhood in the pursuit of candy and goodies. It’s more fun for us to watch the kids enjoying themselves and we love to see what the costume theme of the year is. Some kids (or maybe it’s the parents) come up with incredible ideas and designs!
It’s also pretty awesome to see the whole family dressed up and participating in the fun of the night together.
Having mom & dad get into the holiday is great and you can see it in the excitement the kids have when they walk up to you and yell “Trick-or-Treat”!
How do you remember Halloween as a kid and how does that compare to how your kids – and you – celebrate the holiday now?
Thoughts shared by Kris
akaTheGirls 