I used to love carving pumpkins on halloween. I don't enjoy the day so much as I didn't really enjoy dressing up (though in my younger years I did.) I enjoy the creativity that others put into their celebrating. The creative jack-o-lanterns, and the creative costumes. I enjoy seeing the creativity of friends, while at the same time, never really feeling like this holiday was my outlet for creativity.
Admittedly, I'm too tired to even try this year. We're in the U.S. for 1 year, and we did carve pumpkins, but I didn't give it my full gusto like in past years (where I won contests for creativity). My kids will dress up, but I won't be. I hope I'm not making a mistake and missing out on family memories… but I don't think it'll warp them too much.
I'm just not in the mood for halloween, and I'm allowing myself to not be in the mood, because part of this year, is to get some spiritual rest so that we can go back fully rested…. and if I'm tired, it means I need rest.
In PNG we don't celebrate Halloween. It never made its way into the culture, and so, for the past 7 years, October 31 comes and goes and no one really even thinks much about it. We don't have big orange pumpkins to carve (our pumpkins are small and green), we don't dress up, we don't trick or treat, we don't put up spooky decorations. For the most part, the day comes and goes and no one even realizes 'oh yeah, in the U.S. it was halloween!'.
October moves on by.
This year I expected that I would whip out the old carving tools and create a new masterpiece, but because of where we are emotionally, I just didn't have it in me, and I'm fine with that. I'm loving all these pictures I see on Facebook of friends costumes and pumpkins, etc. I'm not into the spooky and creepy stuff, but I like the way halloween has become less of that (in my circles) and more about being silly and creative with family.
I'm never really sure what we're celebrating on halloween, some folks say it's the harvest, others say its 'free candy', neither of those things really excite me enough to care about celebrating. But, doing something creative and fun with your kids, that excites me…. unfortunately this year, not enough to get me to engage in any highly involved shenanigans. It'll be a low key, mellow halloween for us this year, but that's okay, because it's more our pace. You can't avoid celebrating Halloween for the past 7 years and then suddenly jump right into it full speed.
Our family is low speed, low intensity right now, and that's how we like it. We still enjoy things, just, because it's all so new to us again, we don't need to go to extremes to enjoy them. It's one of the perks of having been away, everything is fresh and new again, and so we don't need to chase the adrenaline rush each year by making it more 'extreme!'
Mellow Ween.
