Halloween itself. It has been so horribly commercialized and monetized, very much with the consent and participation of Americans. The day seems to allow people to let out something that is otherwise repressed, and that’s a good thing. The over-the-top home decorations, some more elaborate than Christmas, well, that’s something else. Mrs. C and I don’t get into holidays much.
One of the more creative costume ensembles at the Central West End Halloween party. Our temperatures have gotten much cooler and we’ve had some rain, so maybe we will get more natural versions of this. Note, though, what is in the hand pf the person on the left. Someone was selling cocktails in IV fluid bags, with the liquid tube to use as a straw. Medicinal purposes only.
Halloween isn’t until Friday but The Lou’s biggest party was last night. On the Saturday before the official date, our trendy Central West End neighborhood sponsors a huge street party. The costumes range from the mundane (who needs more Super Mario brothers?) to people like this. Not sure what’s going on with this couple, she dressed as Lady Liberty with wings and he, wearing a bishop’s mitre, symbolizing something more sinister.
A candy store for local photographers: on the Saturday before Halloween, our Central West End neighborhood has a big public Halloween party in Maryland Plaza. The strange side of St. Louis shows up in force. Curbside bars line the surrounding streets. Costumes range from simple to wildly creative, and there is a contest that we will come to. Plenty of things that go bump in the night.
Now that’s eye contact. Halloween is a big, commercialized deal in the United States and this visitor to the Renaissance Festival looks ready to dish out more tricks than treats. No knocking on her door.
Does this reflect our local psyche? There is a thing going around this year about what are essentially Halloween decorations with a bit of Christmas trim. I've seen it at several houses. This is a dry terrarium at the City Museum with lizards skittering around but it's still creepy.
Halloween is a big deal here, like most of the US, following several decades of commercialization. Leave it to American marketing to monetize fear. This spooky scene is at the City Museum. There is a 11 story open space at the back of the building, originally filled with chutes and conveyors to move materials and finished shoes between floors. Now it contains spiral slides up to the full height of the space. (I wouldn't dare. I'd probably get stuck.) The museum also installed a pipe organ, seen in red at the back. You can almost hear the Bach Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, https://tinyurl.com/354rbtz6, by stepping into the space.
The kid is back in these pages. On Saturday her school put on a Halloween event called Trunk Or Treat. Parents and staff set up a line of cars in the parking lot, rear side outward, with decorated trunks and loads of kid loot. Ellie and her friends attacked the line twice, stashing enough sugar in their bags to cause a diabetic coma. She wore her Hermione outfit from the Harry Potter series and clutched a stuffed Hedwig the owl, obtained by her doting grandparents at the real Platform 9 3/4 in King's Cross station, London.
These events didn't exist when my kids were young. They are everywhere now.
In this country Halloween can be wild fun for children and not a few adults. I'm not into it myself. It is vastly more commercialized than when I was a child. I don't like being frightened (some people think it's fun - I don't) or the implications of violence and death. For most American children, though, it is a sugar-fueled fantasy celebration.
Ellie is getting into Harry Potter. The books are a challenge for her reading level but she has made her way through most of the first one. She loves the movies. So yesterday she got herself up as Hermione (with some help from mom), mounted her broom and was about to take off from our front steps when I caught her.
I don't remember things being like this when we moved into our home thirty-plus years ago, Sure, some houses had fancy Christmas decorations but now other holidays are pretty crazy, Halloween first among them. This is down the street from us and the view is only half the yard. The display does have one very redeeming feature. There are other houses that are crazier. We only do a little.
I was raised in a Catholic household. There were these things called Holy Days of Obligation, which meant that you better go to mass or you were in a bunch of trouble. The first of November was one of them, All Saints Day. When I was young I used to confuse it with the baseball All Star Game, which my father took me to once at Yankee Stadium. It was the more fun of the two.
There is no doubt a long history about how the day before the holy day became associated with the dead and every form of mortal horror. If I weren't so lazy I'd look it up. As it is, we get to drive the children through scenes like this.
Well, at least you know where we are and what we're doing. Not too inspired as I prepare this Thursday night. There seems to be a sense of anxiety and foreboding around, and it has nothing to do with Halloween. At least that's what I feel. Something needs to see us through the next week and the winter.
This Boo at the Zoo thing wasn't very scary. Lots of lit displays with orange, yellow, purple and white on a black background. Cartoonish ghosts and witches with very fake tombstones. No headless ghouls popping out from behind corners, screaming at children while grabbing for them with skeletal fingers. In other words, about the right speed for my seven year old granddaughter.
Halloween in the US was not about terror and death when I was a kid. At least in NYC, all we did was cut a hole in an old sheet and chalk our faces white to make a cheap ghost. The rest of it was all about canvassing a dense neighborhood begging for candy.
BY THE WAY, I've been having trouble with someone leaving vituperative anonymous comments damning middle aged and older people for destroying the world. You can't just block anonymous comments on Blogger anymore so I had to change the settings to allow comments only from people with Google accounts, which includes almost everybody. It will not affect Facebook. If you have trouble leaving a comment here please let me know.
