The Halloween season has always been a time of excitement and thrill ever since I was little. Every year, my family and friends would spend months planning the creation of our costumes. Most of the time I would convince my mom to take me to Value Village to thrift for costumes resembling either a pirate, ninja, fairy, or one of my favourite TV show characters.
Following our costume hunt, my family would go out to Gammondale Farm or Belluz Farm in Slate River Valley just outside of Thunder Bay, Ont. to go pumpkin picking. This usually ended up with me obsessing over finding the biggest pumpkin to carve and a bunch of other pumpkins to convince my mother to make into pies.
When I think back to Halloween as a child, it was a time of wonder and endless fun. At school, we would decorate the classroom for class parties, participate in Halloween decorating contests, and gather for school-wide costume parades.
At home, my family would decorate most of the house inside and out by placing creepy props everywhere. I have particularly frightening memories of finding disembodied feet under the stairs as a kid.
The whole month of October was a festive lead up to trick-or-treating, when my mom would bundle me up in sweaters that always made my costume look weird and give my siblings either garbage bags or pillowcases to get as much candy as our tiny arms could carry.
A lot of the time, my mom would bring a wagon to hold our full bags of delicious loot and would follow after my older sister, older brother, and I down the sidewalk in case we needed help.
By the end of the night, I was usually frozen from the cold temperatures of fall and on the verge of sleep. Yet, I would always stay awake long enough to get home to trade all my peanut candy with the peanut-free candy of my siblings (on my mom’s demand) and hide my stash somewhere secret in my room just in case they tried to take more.
As I got older, my sister and our friend Casey began to plan in-depth routes to maximize the candy we could get when we went on our own. However, before long, I started to go trick-or-treating with my school friends and eventually traded in the door-to-door tradition for teenage Halloween celebrations in high school.
Halloween in high school involved getting together with new friends to watch horror movies at the movie theatre and buying tickets to go see the Haunted Fort Night at Fort William Historical Park before going home to celebrate with our families. These moments with my high school friends turned out to be some of my most cherished Halloween memories—but one of these short moments in particular stands out as my favourite.
In my second year of high school, my now close-knit group of friends began to go to the annual Halloween dance and the school’s ‘Haunted Hallway’ to support our Spanish exchange friend Barbara, who was cast as a possessed nurse for the event.
This was a crowning moment in my years of growing up. I finally got to experience what it was like to come together with a trustworthy group of friends outside of my family that supported each other and celebrate a stereotypical Halloween.
Experiencing Halloween with friends in high school even made me look forward to experiencing Halloween in university with new people.
The pandemic has put a wrench in those plans.
The idea of Halloween when I grew up was a time to get away from the stress of school and to act like a kid without the responsibility of having to act mature—it’s the quintessential holiday of juvenility.
When I consider how children during this pandemic are forced to limit social interaction and are restricted from public celebrations, I feel only devastated that they’ll miss out on the key childhood experiences in their community and will not have an escape from the stresses of everyday life—especially in this trying time.
I can only wish that by next year six-foot distancing will no longer be mandatory for members of our community, and children can be safely encouraged to go outside with their friends rather than stay indoors.
Featured image provided by Nicky Shaw.
