Rosalyn Drexler’s Holiday

The October Occupation

By Rosalyn Drexler

The only holiday I celebrate is Halloween . . . I’d say the skeleton appeals to me because it can be persuaded to dance in the wind and is truly the bare bones of any situation. The pumpkin is particularly central because of its ability to change into a beautiful conveyance for a princess, and all the rest of the cast totally relevant to our period: the frightful cats, the devil with his cautionary pitchfork, the spiders on cobwebs pursuing life as they see it . .  .

It’s a come as you’d like to be party: the dozens of ballerinas, Elvis admirers, presidential maskers, and witches with or without brooms, able to fly to any destination, sweep away sorrow with their brooms (no vacuum cleaners here), and who make their presence known with an irritating cackle—the music of the fears. I once appeared as a ghost, hidden in a small white sheet, with eyeholes cut out so that I could see the basket of candy I collected.

The corner Walgreen’s is already selling out. Halloween is big business here in the “Ironbound” (mainly Portuguese section of Newark, NJ) where many immigrants live and are happy to adapt to our quaint customs. There is a skull that moans as you pass it in the aisle. Alas, poor Yorick has been commercialized from head to toe, and his flesh flung to the four corners of the earth from a Ride For Free ferry: Manhattan to Staten Island. The Statue of Liberty has turned green with envy as oxidation demands a role in this Halloween parade.

Yes, before long the streets will be full of children (some waving wands), some who are gnome sized Batmen waiting to fly above the city, and all will be accompanied by adults alert to the possibility that some of the goodies collected that night might contain sharp razors or bits of glass. Not all donors love children, or Halloween, or bell ringing strangers asking for a handout of sweets. They are Scrooges lost in the wrong holiday.

I would prefer distributing healthy organic candy and snacks to kids, but what I purchase is traditional: tootsie rolls, Hershey bars, jujubes, lollypops, candy corn . . . etc. And of course I will honor myself as a former child with my own familiar selection of holiday fare. Perhaps I will wear a Dolly Parton wig of real hair made in China.

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How do you honor your former child self?