Trick or Tremble

One of Daniel's greatest infatuations of all is Halloween - that day which is become an annual routine for most Americans, but for Daniel is the most forbidden of fruits; candy corn everywhere, and not a kernel to eat. From before Labor Day until the eve of November, the stores are rife with witches and goblins and cobwebs and huge bags of little boxes of candy, and the McZealots pass the season in a strange land, without the slightest nod to the national festival burgeoning right outside their paltry tent.

But the exotic bazaar is not lost on young Daniel. On November first, most American children probably move on to Thanksgiving. But for Daniel, there are roughly 365 days a year to think about Halloween. And since he knows I don't want to talk about it, there's all the more reason to bring it up on every occasion. This is likely my comeuppance for so very many things, such as my expression of (quite feigned) admiration for heavy metal, for my father's consumption, when I was approximately fourteen years old.

Even though we're between Christmas and President's Day, Halloween was very much in the air for Daniel tonight. He asked me whether you go to every house for trick-or-treating when Halloween comes. He made the unfortunate mistake of choosing "you" - probably really intended as "one" or "they", but I elected to treat the question as pertaining to me, and told him that I don't go to anyone's house on Halloween; I actually go to church on that day. The feast of Saint John of Kronstadt is November 1, so there's always church on October 31 - vespers or vigil - to welcome the holiday, belonging to one of Russia's most beloved Saints.

But no - Daniel, it turns out, really didn't want to know what I, personally, do on Halloween. In fact, he pointed out at that point that he was referring to "the other Halloween" - that is, the Halloween which is Halloween, rather than the Halloween which is Not-Hallowen. He wanted to know what they do - all those Halloween-celebrators out there.

Then I answered the question in earnest. I told him that when I was a boy, trick-or-treating from door-to-door was somewhat standard, but during my own childhood, things changed; there were scary stories of people handing out bad things to trick-or-treaters, and so the focus shifted more to the homes of people you actually knew personally. This is all true: Mrs. McAvoy, my first grade teacher, solemnly instructed us not to go door-to-door, but just to go to Halloween parties instead. There was some story about someone getting a razor in an apple, for example - who knows whether it's true, but that hardly mattered - and people thought much more about limiting the scope of their festivities.

But once I had mentioned scary things that dissuaded people from indiscriminate trick-or-treating, Daniel's attention had raced off. It turned out that he didn't have anything like Schick-in-the-McIntosh in mind; he was thinking of much more Halloweeny horrors. He actually said something like, " I'd rather think of something really scary ," and then provided as an example:

"Like maybe a zombie with three heads would scare me." Or thousands of aliens - of the interplanetary kind. Yes, thousands of aliens would scare Daniel.

And at this moment, Pandora's little container had been liberated of its cumbersome lid. Within a minute, Daniel announced:

"Now I'm gonna have a nightmare, because I thought of something scary."

At this point, Ian requested a couple of extra evening prayers, to prevent nightmares. They do have a tendency to keep bad stuff like that at bay. So we began the conversation contemplating Halloween, and ended it at prayer. Effectively, Daniel's mental trick-or-treating had actually led him into church. Maybe next time, we'll talk about Valentine's Day instead...

(January 20. 2012)