The Disappointment of Miss Zombie
When I woke up at 4:30 in the morning yesterday morning so that I might start applying temporary tattoos, make up and fake blood to my face, body and clothes, I had no idea what my day was going to bring. For one, I’ve never lived in an area of a town where kids would actually come to the door. Secondly, I’ve never been able to dress up for work because I’ve always had to be in uniform, and believe it or not, devil horns and kitty tails aren’t part of our Seabag.
The night before had been just as fun and full of excitement too. I found a couple recipes for fake blood using household items and I was trying them out. The first recipe I used was a bust. The second was better and useable. The third was the grossest and most fun because it tasted good so I kept making jokes about eating my own face instead of searching for the required brains.
When I got to work I was slapped with a lot of disappointment. Out of roughly 150 people that work in my building… TEN dressed up. Just ten people. Four out of those ten were ladies that work in my office and myself. The rest were scattered through the building and four of them took off their costumes after our picture was taken.
It really made me wonder when Halloween became not fun and when people stopped dressing up. I asked one of the ladies in a different department (who was not dressed up) and she said that everyone used to dress up. They also used to have a costume contest where you could win monetary prizes.
I got my answer.
Since the center was no longer handing out money no one was trying anymore. We had so much fun yesterday and I still got my job accomplished PLUS other stuff. At first, it was difficult to get people to take me seriously but once they realized I wasn’t joking and their stuff needed to get done, it got done.
I take that one as a personal victory too. Since I’ve been here it doesn’t seem like anyone has put any faith in me because I was the new person and I’ve been moved back and forth between two different offices. If someone had a question they would deliberately seek my supervisor and if she wasn’t in they would wait. When someone would ask me a question and I could give them an answer they would still ask my supervisor when they thought I wasn’t listening. That did not happen at all yesterday. I figure if people can listen to me when I’m dressed like that they’ll listen to me when I’m normally dressed.
I left work in an excited tizzy because I knew I was on the way home to give candy to strange children. The building manager had set a pumpkin policy. If you had candy to give to trick-or-treaters you put a pumpkin on your door and kids would only knock on those doors. I parked my car and got into the elevator expecting to see pumpkins everywhere when I stepped out. OH, how wrong was I? One door. One door with three little pumpkins. That door belonged to my apartment.
When the first kid came to my door I had the biggest mixing bowl I have overflowing with different kinds of candy. I admit that initially I had put the good candy at the bottom hoping the kids would take all the crappy stuff first leaving the good stuff for my roommate and I. After the first two kids I mixed it all up hoping they would just take it all.
The mixing bowl is still sitting in my kitchen about 3/4 of the way full. We got a handful of small groups of children. It seemed that the later it got the older the older the children were and that could be expected. The last group we got was at 9:30. I’m such a loser that they actually woke me up. We had turned on Nightmare on Elm Street and I feel asleep to it.
All the events of yesterday got me thinking. Are there less children trick-or-treating because parents are paranoid of evil people poisoning candy (even though that’s never been proved to be real)?** When did Halloween become only for the children? Would children still dress up if there wasn’t a promise of candy from strangers? Are adults really that money-hungry that they’ll only dress up if cash is offered? Doesn’t that make those people the equivalent of a prostitute??
**I’m not saying that I don’t agree with checking the candy. When I was little, even though we knew most of the people whose houses we went to my Mom still checked our loot. This is an f-ed up world and anything can happen but you’ve got to have at least a little faith in humanity and not let vicious rumors stop you from having a good time.
November 1st, 2007 at 5:13 pm
Halloween is disappearing because it is not P.C. Some school districts in the U.S. no longer celebrate Halloween - they celebrate Fall Festival. These same school districts also don’t celebrate Christmas - they celebrate Winter Festival. Halloween is deemed a Pagan ritual.
I went through a Catholic school for 12 years. We celebrated Halloween every year. I was always taught by nuns - and pagan rituals were never mentioned.
I feel sorry for your generation and the next ones coming. Just to be P.C. they have taken the fun out of everything. Can you hear Santa saying “HO HO HO! Merry Winter Festival!”. Of course, if you notice winter festival has no mention of the birth of Christ.
November 2nd, 2007 at 4:37 am
When I was doing undergrad at Sarah Lawrence, the college had a time-honored tradition called “Fall Fest”, a week-long celebration culminating in the entire campus population dressing up in costume for a Halloween bonfire and masquerade ball. I lived for those festivals, because they were so much fun. But your post here made me remember that there was also a very heavy push during that week to gain monetary contributions to the college’s Annual Fund; i.e., the holiday, however delightful, was still devoted to monetary gain.
Of course, since entering corporate America following graduation, I have noticed a significant decrease in dressing in costume at work; first, slightly, in New York, and definitely more so since I moved here. I don’t know the reasoning behind it, whether we require some sort of monetary gain in order to do it, or whether we simply gradually lose the desire to dress up, express ourselves, or have FUN on this particular holiday as we grow older.
Which is why I was so happy that you dressed up as you did; you were doing your part, however small, in keeping the fun and time-honored tradition of Samhain alive. And for that alone you should feel proud and happy. *smile*
September 9th, 2009 at 10:26 am
Hi! I was surfing and found your blog post… nice! I love your blog.
Cheers! Sandra. R.