Halloween 2009

It's Halloween today...finally!...as the boys are exclaiming. They are so excited to go out trick-or-treating tonight and this is the first year that they've been this excited. They have plans to go all throughout the neighborhood collecting as much loot as possible which is, of course, the point.

Every Halloween I'm reminded of my own childhood. My mom had this tradition that was imposed upon her as a child and she just paid it forward with clear intentions of torturing her young, I'm sure. She made us eat liver before we could go out trick-or-treating. Yes, liver. Beef liver none-the-less. So here my sister and I would sit at the kitchen table, costumes donned with the all-powerful carrot of trick-or-treating dangling in front of us and a plate of liver before us blocking the way. I'm quite sure that this can be considered child abuse in some states but clearly Minnesota was not one of them. Each year, when asked yet again WHY we had to ingest this nastiness, she'd simply state, "because it's good for you." Unfortunately for her, we grew older and got wise and our challenging assaults became more and more calculated and precise. We felt slight triumph the year that she conceded to letting my dad chicken fry chicken livers instead of the beef liver. At least the strong, dry flavor was smaller and coated in salty crunchiness. And finally, my sister inflicted the dying blow when one year she pointed out that just because she (mom) had had to eat it as a kid on Halloween DID NOT mean that she had to make her kids do the same. She actually had a choice in the matter and tradition was not a good enough excuse to carry on such vile behavior.

That did it.

I've not had beef liver since and while I don't remember at what age we finally got the abuse to stop but I was old enough to have it burned into my memory forever. We still like to tease mom about it. In all fairness to my mother, she's not that mean. In fact, she can't even tell you why she insisted upon this tradition for so long or why she was so sure that this was what good mothers did for or to (depending on your view point) their kids before allowing them to ingest as much sugar as a body could handle. We as mothers are trained to do our best to raise our children in a healthful way and allowing a sugar free-for-all can be really hard even though it's only once a year. When my kids were younger, I spent plenty of time, effort and money finding candy without corn syrup, all natural or organic and trying to replace the regular candy with this "good stuff". That only can last for so long before you realize that it IS just once a year. So I conceded my point as well.

This year, I gave my kids a choice. We happen to be in the process of going from one treat a day, which we implemented as my own need for constant daily sugar loading has subsided from my days as a mother to newborn twins, to having sweets once or twice a week. Yes, we're doing this right in the middle of Halloween and right at the beginning of the Holiday season. We'll see how this goes. Anyway, I came to the kids with a proposal earlier in the week. They could either choose to have one treat a day all week and then 3 small pieces of candy on Halloween night or choose to not have any treats all week and then have a candy free-for-all tonight. Well, my kids are smart and they chose the free-for-all. They've been really great about not having treats all week but have been talking incessantly about Halloween which stands to reason of course! They are so excited about tonight that they can't hardly stand it. I have to say that I truly enjoy letting go on Halloween and watching them plow through as much of their stash as is humanly possible. G last year swore off all candy for the rest of forever after his tummy ache set in (and then of course was ready to give it one more go the following day - such a martyr). I don't know if I'll have them sort and graph their stash before digging in this year or not - we have to fit some math in somewhere, right? But to be sure, a great and sugar-filled time will be had by all and may the ensuing crash and tummy aches be mild.

Happy Halloween!