On Halloween Candy, Costumes, and Camille Saint-Saëns
a writing prompt for you to use this week
We bought too much Halloween candy. After purchasing the egregiously expensive big bag, I learned our new street will likely have just a handful or two of trick-or-treaters. Our widely-spaced lawns are passed over on the way to the more densely populated neighborhood around the corner. Good thing I bought the candy we like.
My hope is to see a few homemade costumes. Halloween in the early parenting years had me crafting costumes we all still remember:
the wizard’s cape made out of royal blue spangly material, a staple in our dress-up box for years
the coat for a firefighter—called “pyre-pighter” by the then three year-old—also an apt description
the mummy costume with trailing gauze
the cat, the witch, the astronaut, the fairy
All were handmade until the year our oldest won a costume contest at church in a pirate costume from Target. I was done after that.
My own memories of Halloween as a child include homemade and purchased costumes (and those plastic full-face masks I could never see out of well.) The great annual post-trick-or-treating candy trade on the floor with my sisters was epic and cutthroat. I recall pumpkin carving contests and the year we made Cinderella’s chariot with the dollhouse bench inside, which caught on fire from the burning candle. I remember rereading an Old Witch picture book until the spine gave way, just as I read Pumpkin Soup to my children, over and over.
(Even now I can tell my eyes don’t line up right in that princess mask….could anyone see out of them?)
My most vivid Halloween childhood memory is of our elementary school music class. Every year Mrs. Miller would play us Camille Saint-Saëns's Danse macabre, Op. 40. She’d tell us to imagine the scene come to life: Death visits a graveyard on Halloween, hosting a dance party for the skeletons. We’d listen to the harp tolling midnight, the dissonance of the violin, the waltzing strings, and wild rattling xylophones, as we waited for the oboe to sound the rooster’s call of dawn, signaling the end of the party for another year.
I hope children today have music teachers that invite them just to listen and imagine in such a captivating way that—decades later—they still recall. Even now, I play that piece for myself every year, and it’s not Halloween without it. Thank you, Mrs. Miller.
a writing prompt
Listen to Danse macabre below, and write about your own recollections of Halloween, however your family observed it. What specific sensory details do you remember? Who or what helped form your memories of the holiday?
Click below to listen to the audio file, which will take you to the web version of my post, or you can listen on the Substack app, just not in the email itself. (I’m still learning this new platform!) There’s also a link below to a YouTube version. Both are excellent.
Share what you remember about Halloweens past in the comments.
If you think of someone else who would enjoy this prompt, share the post with them.