Canadian Kids on Halloween
It’s that time of year where we decorate our windows with spooky images and silhouettes, carve pumpkins for our front porch, get dressed up in costume, hand out candy and watch the young ghouls and goblins run the streets on all hallows eve. It’s a unique celebration where you can be someone or something you aspire to be without judgement.
When we were young, we really looked forward to Halloween. From making spooky crafts in elementary school to watching scary-ish movies like the Goonies or the Addams Family by candlelight with your family. We hunted for weeks for the perfect costume, which in the 80s was usually made up of a cat, Zorro, a witch, a vampire, or your favourite He-Man type character — with a plastic mask where seeing was optional and the elastic tied a little too tight around your head. We could proudly carry plastic weapons and our suits were most-likely flammable — but we didn’t care. We just wanted to be out there, in the dark, past our bedtime. It felt so rebellious.
But it was cold. Like snowing cold. In October. Every. Freaking. Year.
And, what do most Canadian parents do to their kids when it’s cold out? They make them put on their snowsuit.
I remember one year in particular. I was eight years old and I wanted to be royalty. My mom had this really beautiful King’s costume that her mom had made for her when she was young. It was made from red felt, white fur and was bedazzled like a Liberace sequined jumpsuit.
I absolutely loved it.
I used to put it on and dance around the house commanding my siblings to do things for me. “As per the order of the King!” I used to proclaim. When Halloween night was upon us, I donned my costume ready to face the night, came downstairs and my mom took one look at me and said, “it’s cold outside and might snow… soooooo you have to put on your snowsuit.”
WTF mom!
At the mature age of eight, I hadn’t really developed my “talking back” muscle yet, so I put my head down and went to the hall closet. Some kids didn’t mind wearing their coat over their costume, but I didn’t see the point. I wanted to show mine off! I took off my garb, and begrudgingly grabbed my pink snowsuit.
Little did I know adding a three-inch layer of synthetic pillow-like stuffing under a fitted costume was not ideal, and now my costume didn’t want to fit. I turned to my mom for help — as she tried to get the red velvet pants and white top over my snowsuit it felt like she was trying to squeeze me like the last of the toothpaste out of the tube.
She succeeded, but it wasn’t pretty. I felt confined, short of breath, tight in so many places, but I was ready. I grabbed my crown and started out the door when my mom yelled, “Don’t forget your toque”… “But my crown” I yelled back. And then I got the mom look — as I’m sure trying to get my younger brother Elliott into his ninja turtle costume was just as challenging and she had had enough. I took off my crown and put on the toque. The crown didn’t have a chin strap so it gently sat on my toques pompom holding on for dear life.
We were finally ready to venture out into the night looking like Joey from that episode of Friends when he put on all of Chandler’s clothes at once.
We walked our neighbourhood together, meeting up with a few street friends along the way. Everyone looked like dressed up puffy Oompah-loompas and Stay Puft Marshmallow men running around yards laughing and scaring each other. If it weren’t for the parents at the end of the driveway, no one would know who was who.
Because I had younger siblings, it was still a few years before I could venture out on my own, without a parent, sans snowsuit, and a pillowcase in tow instead of a pumpkin bucket. I would dream about hitting the fancy streets that gave out cans of pop and full chocolate bars. Childhood aspirations, eh?
As the night wound down, kids slowly syphoned off to their respective homes — and Elliott and I
weighed down with sugary goodness, made our way back to ours. Once we were home, we could finally peel off all the layers, have a bath to get warm, then run down to the family room like it was Christmas morning just to sort through our haul.
We sat on the floor and dumped our loot on the carpet — now, you had to have your piles — there were six categories:
- The chocolate pile — this housed deliciousness like Caramilk, Aero, and Crispy Crunch bars
- The candy pile had cavity promoting sweets like rockets, bottlecaps, twizzlers and swedish berries
- The lollipop pile was for anything on a stick, except Tootsie pops… ew, David
- The gum pile which included gum balls, Double Bubble, and preferably Chiclets so you could play the box like a harmonica afterwards
- The chip pile had crunchy goodness like Ruffles, Lays and Hawkins Cheezies, and lastly;
- The undesirables — this was considered the confectionary graveyard that welcomed tootsie rolls, tootsie pops, candy corn, black licorice and boxes of raisins.
Elliott was only 5 so he wasn’t yet versed on the “siblings candy trading treaty”, but I made sure he knew how gross Coffee Crisps and Smarties were as they were secretly my favourite.
Once we completed our inventory, we were now allowed to have ONE piece of candy and then were ushered off to bed.
The next day, there was four feet of snow on the ground and Christmas had infiltrated stores and television stations — no rest for the holiday wicked, eh? But I wouldn’t have traded this tradition for the world. Back then was so simple — with our homemade costumes, using your mom’s makeup to get dressed up, meeting up with your friends and if they had the same costume you just yelled “TWINSIES!”. We carried flashlights and weren’t afraid to knock on doors. Nothing was posted on social media and the only photos taken were by your parents of you and your siblings in your foyer before venturing out. It was one of the most communal parts of my childhood, and I loved it.
Thanks for the memories… now hand me a Coffee Crisp.
Love,
Patricia
