HALLMARK HOLIDAYS

Since your birth, we've been on track to celebrate every remaining major Hallmark holiday for the year with you. Thanks to the commercialization of the American holidays, I've been brainwashed to believe that I'm not a good parent unless you experience each and every holiday with either gifts and/or candy. Lots of gifts and/or candy. Sure there's deeper meaning to all the holidays, but you probably won't learn to appreciate it until you're an adult.

I almost blew it right off the bat with Halloween, but pulled through in the end. Which isn't bad, considering you were three weeks old when Halloween came around. That night we dressed you up in a bunny outfit and sat you in your baby lounger down in the basement. And that was your first Halloween.

No running around the neighborhood collecting candy for you, which would inevitably wind up being for your dad and me. No neighbors oohing and awwing over your cute costume. You didn't even get to answer the door with me and pass out candy to the kids. Nope, none of that. Thanks to a ghoulish invisible monster running rampant that night, swine flu.

You couldn't have been born at a more terrifying time. All over the news people were warned of the impending pandemic caused by this new type of influenza that was deadlier than any other type in recent years. People lined up for hours to get the vaccine and there were mass shortages. Otherwise healthy people who could normally fight off the regular flu were dying from this new flu that came from pigs. Everyone was warned on Halloween to disinfect their door bells and knobs frequently and to not let kids reach their grimy little hands into the candy bowl, so as to not pass along the swine flu.
That's why you spent Halloween night hanging out in the basement, and that's why there was no candy or oohing and awwing. Not that you probably cared about it. You didn't miss out on much upstairs. We got 3 whole trick-or-treaters. I thought I'd be the "cool house" and emptied the candy bowl filled with full sized candy bars into their bags, blew out the jack-o-lanterns, turned off the porch light, and called it a night.

From that night I learned that our neighborhood sucks for trick-or-treating. We were the only ones on the street to have carved pumpkins, and trick-or-treaters were next to non-existent. When you're old enough to realize that Halloween is all about the candy, I won't let you down. We'll drive to a rich neighborhood filled with McMansions and do the trick-or-treating there. If you're going to make the effort to trick-or-treat, why waste your time on snack-size candy bars. Go to where the full sized ones are, and lots of them, right?