Halloween

So tonight was Trick or Treat night in our town.  A week early, totally lame, but very fun given that it was Lily's first real time Trick or Treating.  Two years ago she was 10 months old and we took her around the Timberland Halloween party.  Last year we walked the Pearl St. Mall during the Munchkin Masquerade.  These were all fun, but this year Lily got it.  She's known for a while now that on Halloween you dress up, and you go out and get candy!  

Halloween is a big deal in our house.  Both my wife and I love it and we get into with decorating and carving pumpkins and all the pomp and circumstance that goes along with Halloween.  One of the things that we were excited about when it came to having kids is bringing back some of the holiday mystique.  Let's face it, after a certain age you like holidays, you have fun participating in them and reaping the benefits, but the magic is pretty much gone.  Well as parents, it all comes back around through your kids.  You should have seen Lily's face when we brought out the Halloween decorations.  It brought me back to when I used to do the same thing with my Mom.

So heading into this year's Halloween we were all excited.  Lily because for some reason strangers were going to give her treats and her parents were ok with this; and Carli and myself because after three years, we were going to start to see the fun stuff really begin.  And that brings me to my point: I'm instituting a global ban on all costumes that are not somehow related back to something scary or magical.  Halloween is about scary stuff.  Judging be the popular costumes we saw while out tonight, it's about super hero's and farm animals.  I admit it, I'm guilty of this myself.  I distinctly remember a Halloween when I was under 10 when I was sent out in a C3PO costume.  LAAAAME.  Look, kids like to dress up.  All kids do, whether it's pretending to be a space cowboy or a princess, it's something that all kids go through and enjoy.  Well, you can be Spider-man any day of the year; what the hell does Spider-man have to do with Halloween?  NOTHING.  So let's build a set of rules to abide by when picking out a Halloween costume.

Tier 1

Classic Halloween

This tier is the can't miss icons affiliated with the holiday.  Witches, scarecrows, pumpkin heads etc...

Tier 2

The Classic Movies

This includes any of the monsters made famous by Universal Studios back in the 1920's and 30's.  Wolfman, Dracula, Frankenstein, the Mummy...you can't go wrong with these classics.  This tier also includes generic versions of these creatures, so if you just dress like a vampire, zombie etc. 

Tier 3

Modern day horror figures

I admit, Hollywood plays a role in some of these things.  The easiest place to go for a good scare is the movies.  So for this tier, we build off of The Classics and go to other movie characters: Jason Vorhees, Freddy Kruger, Michael Myers, Jigsaw, Pinhead.  Bonus points for how far you go and how realistic you make your costume.

Tier 4

Dead X

Some of my favorite costumes are those that are creative.  I went to a Halloween party one year and she was dressed as "Dead Little Red Riding Hood".  It was great, she bought a Red Riding Hood costume and added a prosthetic slash to the throat and painted her face so she looked like a corpse.  My brother and an ex-girlfriend of his went one year as "Dead Disco Dancers" where they bought bad 70's clothes at a thrift shop and painted their faces to be zombies.  Classic!

Tier 5

Magic

Since there is a certain magical allure to Halloween, we'll allow costumes that aren't scary per see, but deal in magic.  So wizards the aforementioned witch, things of that nature.  Now that being said, I don't want to see another fucking Harry Potter costume. Dumbledore is ok, but it needs to be dead on authentic.  Gandalf is in, but being a hobbit is out.  This tier may need some work to further define it.

Tier 6

The List of Unacceptable Costumes

Anything not covered above so: The superhero du jour (based on whatever film was popular the previous summer), princesses, any Nickelodeon character (spongebob, Dora, Diego, Hannah Montana etc...), any cartoon character in general (unless it's from The Nightmare Before Christmas or Corpse Bride), animal costumes (unless it's a dead animal costume, like a cow with a machete in it's head and lots of blood), clowns (unless they are evil undead clowns), hippies, hobo's (unless they are murdering crazed hobo's)...the list is endless.

Look this isn't a science yet.  There are going to be revisions, but the bottom line is, Lily can dress up like Dora the Explorer 364 other days a year.  If when she's a little older, she comes to me and wants to dress up as zombie Dora for Halloween, that'd be great.  But sorry, until then, think of a scary costume, because Halloween is the night of the dead!  C'mon, let's be respectful of that.