Commentary: Halloween was a festive evening in Deming, with autumn smells riding a current of cool air yet still warm enough that one did not need to cover a costume with a jacket.
Under a beautiful sunset with highlights of crimson, blue, and bronze - New Mexico sunsets being as rich and complex as gourmet wine - the Citilife Church turned its little bit of Pear Street into a small country fair, with live music and a fairway created by upended folding tables. There were simple games: bouncing ping pong balls into bowls of water, rolling pumpkins with brooms, and knocking over pyramids of toilet paper with mini-pumpkins. The lack of flashing lights and electronic noise did not seem to disappoint the children. Sugary bounty flowed into pillowcases.
There were "trunk or treat" events in the parking lots of other churches, too, as well as the Sun Valley hardware store down on Columbus Road. A "trunk or treat" is a congregation of cars, often decked with Halloween flourish, in a parking lot where children can parade in their costumes and visit friendly faces to harvest candy. Since the adult participants are usually registered or otherwise vetted by the organizers, this is regarded as a safer option than ringing the doorbells of strangers.
There was old-fashioned trick or treating in town as well, with many homes decorated to varying levels of ambition and opening their doors to costumed visitors. A home on Elm Street built the stern of a ghostly pirate ship adjacent to a porch ablaze in octarine glow seen through a fog of ghostly apparitions. Terror held me at the sidewalk but my sons - Spiderman accompanied by a winged purple dragon - charged into the fray and emerged unscathed, even emboldened.
Shamed by their courage, I made sure to do some "superheroing" of my own at a stop on Tin Street, where a house had gone all out with decorations, a front porch funhouse, and a large staff of masked ghouls. Younger children were steered toward tamer fare in the driveway, but that was not for me. Mustering fatherly courage before my wide-eyed children, I strode into the dark layers of foreboding that was the front porch. It was getting late and I was the lone mortal at this gateway to the underworld. Terrifying wraiths leaped at me through the Stygian gloom. After lingering for a moment among some cobwebs, I was on my way back to this mortal coil when a monster who had forgotten all about me was peeking through the curtain out to the street. I could not and did not waste the opportunity. Creeping behind the unspeakable apparition and approaching what I took to be its ear, I cried, "Boo!" The monster bolted upright and said, "Aw, man." Score one for the living.
In some American cities there is an expectation that the beggars of Halloween will tell a joke or somehow perform for their treat. There is something leveling about this, a sort of social lubricant. When a former school board official turned up in a Jedi costume, I tested his abilities in the Force by throwing candy at him. Judging from his reflexes, Jedis aren't what they used to be.
Some people disparage trick or treating beyond age 14, but I don't. Why forbid adults from playful interactions among neighbors familiar and unfamiliar? At harvest season, amid liturgical feasts for the departed, as the land prepares for winter, playful interactions with strangers is a way to knit a community together. Our children lead the way; let us follow.
--
Algernon D'Ammassa is Desert Sage. Write to him atDesertSageMail@gmail.com.