November 3, 2026
Over the years I’ve heard people say, “I love Halloween! It’s my favorite holiday!” To be honest, I’ve never considered Halloween to be an actual holiday. If I wasn’t getting holiday pay for the day it simply wasn’t a holiday in my mind. Halloween falls within the realm of such notable days as St. Patrick’s Day and Valentine’s Day. Of course all of these noteworthy days have their purpose and are always a good excuse to go out and party, but they’re not holidays. With that being said though, I’ll respect anyone who claims that they love Halloween, even if it’s not a holiday.
Like most youngins, I did a few years of trick-or-treating where my mom would drive my brother and I around our small hometown of Kingfisher, Oklahoma. Those were the days when homemade popcorn balls were considered a cherished treat to receive when trick-or-treating. Such sought after goodies showed that someone had really put out some Halloween effort! There were even times when Alan and I might be invited into a family’s home for a miniature haunted house tour. Indeed, people were dedicated back in those days. These days, most of that kind of stuff would be considered illegal or the beginnings of a horror movie. Yes, the 1970’s were the glory days of trick-or-treating! However, when my older brother Alan stopped trick-or-treating so did I, and thus was the end of all the free candy and the end of a glorious chapter of my youth.
I do remember a few Halloween parties during elementary school, and I even remember bringing my Halloween costume to Kindergarten. This is a cherished memory mostly because my mom had me pack up an extra costume just in case some kid showed up to school without one. Yea, mothers used to do stuff like that back then. We also had a big church Halloween party one year. This is stuck in my memory because the spooky event took place in an old house that was on our farm back when I was kid. It was behind the house we lived in, but we just called it “the old house.” This was the house where not only my dad was raised but his dad as well. Actually I lived in it until I was around five or six, and even though we didn’t live in the old, two-story farm house anymore there was still electricity hooked up to it. So one Halloween, everyone in our church put on costumes, came over, and we all had a holy, Halloween ball! Indeed, our old house became our church’s haunted, party house. Then the 1980’s came, and everything changed.
By the time I was in high school kids had pretty much quit trick-or-treating because there were rumors of people lacing candy with poison or sticking needles in them. Where these ideas came from, I have no idea, but such tales put the fear into mothers everywhere. I never really understood if these stories derived from an actual crime or were just an urban legend. This was also the time when heavy metal music was believed to be the voice of Satan! There were rumors that the rock band KISS stood for Knights In Satan’s Service, and playing your rock and roll records backwards provided step-by-step instructions on how to sell you soul to the devil! My church that used to hold Halloween parties now looked upon October 31st as the most evil day of the year! Back in those days people held the belief that Halloween had become Lucifer’s party day, and there were even rumors of human sacrifices as well as marrying goats and all other kinds of evil stuff going on during October. Instead of “Trick-or-treat” the rallying call of Halloween had become, “Hail Satan!”
Over the years those kind of ideas have mellowed out a bit. Ozzy Osbourne, the prince of darkness, had a reality TV show, and as for KISS, most kids just see that as some old band their grandpa used to listen to. The popularity of the compact disc pretty much put an end to playing records backwards as well. And of course, in these politically correct times, we would be told that we can’t discriminate against Satan worshipers. They’re people too. So this meant that the spirit of Halloween had returned to being nothing more than good times of costume parties and free candy!
Other than the church parties, I’ve only been to one Halloween party in my life, and that was carried out several years ago by some lady I used to work with. She put out a good deal of effort with a chocolate fountain and a margarita machine. My co-worker was also a wedding planner, so she used her wedding planning skills and wedding reception tools to throw together a pretty killer Halloween party. As I recall, I just sipped on a few drinks and chatted about classic rock with her husband. I couldn’t drink too much. I had a thirty-mile drive home through southern Oklahoma, and the thought of spending the night in a small Oklahoma town jail for a DUI was far more frighten than running into a bunch of crazy cult members who were conducting human sacrifices.
Even in college I never went to a Halloween party. The most I ever did for Halloween during my college days was when me a couple of guys wandered over the one of the girls’ dorms where some of the young ladies had thrown together a low budget haunted house in the spirit of a fund raiser. Now I have been to several haunted houses over the years, and a couple of years ago I joined up with some folks from work and we all took in a haunted house down by Dallas. The haunted house was great, but the scariest part of the whole deal was the terrifying admission of fifty bucks! Now that was freaking scary!
For this year though, I did very little concerning the hallowed day. Margaret and I used to go to a considerable amount of trouble putting up Halloween decorations all over our house, but these days the thought of climbing up into the attic and pulling everything down is a real spine chiller! Instead, I spent Halloween watching my beloved Oklahoma State University Cowboys play football against the Iowa State Cyclones. My OSU Cowboys’ main color is bright orange, and being the good sport, Iowa State agreed to deck their team out in all black. So on the field we had one team dressed head to toe in orange while the other team was dressed in all black. Indeed, that was enough Halloween spirit for me!
Leave a Reply