My husband, Oscar, asked me this evening: When do adults get too old for Halloween?
Never, I said.
We had just left Cherry Creek mall in Denver, where a number of adults were sprinkled among costumed kids who carried trick-or-treat baskets, with parents in tow. And before we even arrived at the mall, we had met a neighbor in our apartment building, who was dressed as a box of popcorn.
Some adults cling to witches and ghouls and skeletons and web-crossed graves the way some of us take pleasure in Santa, elves, presents, candy canes and the The Nutcracker. Popular TV shows devotedly reference Halloween in their episodes.
I was incredulous, for instance, when a character on Grey's Anatomy last week was saddened because she missed her child's first Halloween. It was just another example of the rising status of All Hallows Eve, which nabbed a segment tonight on ABC's World News with Charles Gibson. The segment pointed out how much Americans spend on what isn't even a designated national holiday.
Satan certainly is cunning as he douses celebrity status on his hell-bent festival. Halloween is mainstream, a pillar of childhood fun, a fixture on the fall calendar, the predecessor of the Thanksgiving and Christmas gatherings. And when I think of the powerful morphing of Halloween, in my mind's eye I see a teenager working at one of the mall restaurants this evening. The teenager wore a horned, grinning and red-faced demon mask.
He waved as my husband and I passed him by.
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