Halloween again, again

Today is Halloween again. Again. It’s still a day that I don’t have any interest in—though I don’t hate it, either. To each their own, and all that. Today is a far bigger deal for other reasons, but more about that in another post.

I said last year that one of the reasons I stopped buying candy for trick or treaters was that there were seldom any that stopped at any of the houses we lived in but I also said, “I’ll probably buy candy” for this year. That never happened.

While this has been a difficult year for me, and for a lot of reasons, the issue right now is that I haven’t had enough good sleep, even though the number of hours have been enough, and it’s left me feeling tired and disconnected. I managed to mow my front lawn today (the back is scheduled for tomorrow), and that left me physically tired, too.

In fact, I was so worn out after the mowing that I didn’t have my shower until late afternoon, and that was when I heard kids’ voices coming for a neighbour's yard that I remembered it was Halloween today. As it happens, I had some things to do in the back of the house (including writing a couple more blog posts), so I wasn’t up front when the kids started knocking on the door.

The doorbell camera told me that between 4:57 and 6:43pm, there three groups of kids in costume who came to my door, around ten kids in total. Three of the visitors were mid-teen girls who stood looking at their phones after they’d knocked. One of them said, “He says he’s in the area”, and they went on to the next house a moment later. Just like last year, the only response the trick-or-treaters got at my house was a telling off from Leo. Also like last year, I had the blinds closed so I could have my dinner and watch the TV news in peace—well, relative peace.

There still wasn’t much news coverage, but Stuff reported that, ”Billionaires’ Auckland mansion transformed into haunted house for trick-or-treaters”, an event which turned out to be a fair bit more than the average New Zealander could do. Not content to let the billionaires have all the fun, RNZ reported that the NZ Police warned “Don't throw caution out the window for Halloween” , which began, “It's that one night of the year where parents basically throw out the stranger danger warning, send their kids out at dusk and green light them taking lollies from random people,” which is true enough—and the biggest irony of the holiday. Even so, the piece had a bit of a buzzkill to it.

I still don’t know whether anything can ever rekindle an affection within me for Halloween, but I do think it's kind of fascinating to watch how Halloween participation in New Zealand is growing in spurts and shrinkages. Last year I wondered whether “more people start adopting it, could change things for me, but the jury’s still out on that.

The drawing accompanying is post is one I originally shared last year, something I made when I was in my late teens or early 20s. I’m sharing it again this year because I can, I never did before last year, and because this particular crude doodle thing is still the only treat I have to hand out this year.

So, I guess that’s again my Happy Halloween to those who celebrate.