I was never actually allowed to take part in anything Halloween related. In my house it was called The Devils Birthday. And obviously, if you celebrated The Devils Birthday it would clearly lead to a proclivity for witchcraft…or a romantic encounter with a (iridescent?) vampire…or demonic possession or something worse which would lead to my soul being eternally condemned to hell.  So…there was that.

There are a lot of Halloween experiences I missed out on. I tried to rectify some of this as an adult with varying levels of success, but the problem is all these years later…even though I’m grown-ass now…I’m genuinely afraid of demonic possession at this time of year. And the only demon I wish to be affiliated with is the one on my shoulder which encourages me to go grocery shopping on an empty stomach. I should buy shares in my local supermarket. Anyway. I’ve also never:

Trick or treated: Once, and only once, I managed to negotiate with my family and the trick-or-treating happened (and by negotiate, I mean I lied spectacularly…I also got caught and punished spectacularly). We strolled up to these houses and they’d run out of chocolate, so they handed out cold, hard cash-money instead. Well dammit I wanted chocolate and was briefly too stupid to remember cash-money can be exchanged for chocolate. Briefly. BTW cash-money is also how I got caught…having to explain how my finances suddenly increased exponentially when I was supposed to be having a totally innocent devil-free dinner at a friend’s house raised some interesting questions…anyway.

Carved a pumpkin: Not only is it celebrating the king of demons’ birthday,  it’s also playing with your food. That was not tolerated in my house. But now I’m grown-ass. So, if my grown-ass wants to carve a damn pumpkin, then I’m going to carve a damn pumpkin. So, I got myself a pumpkin, drew an intricate design (triangles. I drew triangles and nothing else because I’m artistically challenged). I started to carve…then…ended up eating pumpkin soup on the sofa. With an entire baguette. It was delicious and a good day. But not remotely scary.

The mess in the kitchen was a little scary. I’ll try again next year.

Had a spooky movie night: I mean, I’ve seen…a couple of scary movies around his time of year…even if I only watched The Nightmare Before Christmas six months ago, but you know how people have full-on scary movie nights? Never had one of them.

Dressed up: I mean…do I need to explain? I did put a bed-sheet over my head once and pretended to be a ghost…but I think the effect was kind of lost because I don’t have plain white bed-sheets. And teal-coloured, stripey ghosts aren’t very halloween-y. I should have told myself I was being……avant-garde.

Handed out candy to trick or treaters: Instead we locked our doors and huddled in the front room pretending we weren’t home. Because we were looking after the community’s eternal souls by not encouraging them to dress up as witches and ghouls.

Been to a Halloween party: This is one I will finally plan to rectify next week…because my boss is forcing me to go to the company Halloween party (hiding in the supply closet will  be frowned upon, I’m told), and apparently, I can’t go dressed as myself because and I quote ‘you’re not scary’, and I can’t go dressed as a company employee because ‘do you really think that’d be appropriate?’. Some people are so sensitive. Tsk.