Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Happy Halloween!

I’ll be upfront about my position on this topic: I am not a huge Halloween person. It is a great relief that my kids are old enough to be in charge of their own costumes. I appreciate the efforts of others and admire the houses decorated with spooky webs and giant spiders, but none adorn my house. We do have a jack-o-lantern on our front porch, but one of my daughters and her friends bought and carved it with absolutely no parental involvement. I put in my time when the kids were younger: I had a couple Halloween parties at our house and planned several class parties for the “holiday”, so maybe I simply used up my energy years back.

Last weekend, I asked in what I thought was a very enthusiastic voice whether any of my kids were interested in putting our Halloween decorations out (which really just consist of a few candles). I might have overdone the enthusiasm because all I got was some confused stares until one finally responded slowly, “Nooo?” as if she was uncertain of her answer because it was a trick question. Suffice it to say the decorations are still not out.

To be fair, this apathy extends to other holidays also, and while I would like to blame it on something genetic, I’ve concluded that the root cause is good old fashioned laziness- it all just seems like too much work. When one of my sisters gave birth to my niece a few days before Halloween almost nine years ago, I remember wondering with sympathy if she would be obligated to have Halloween themed birthday parties forever after.

A couple weeks ago, I was looking online at pictures my cousin had posted of the birthday party for her 3-year old son at which everyone was dressed as superheroes, even the adults (horrified emphasis on this last point). Honestly, I found it stressful just looking at the pictures. Whereas an appropriate response might have been, “Wow, that looks like a lot of fun for the toddler,” mine was more along the lines of, “Thank goodness that party was in Colorado and I didn’t have to come up with a superhero costume.”

It is with this background that you will understand why I was less than thrilled when my other sister suggested that I create a Halloween playlist. I tried to explain that I thought a playlist with only two songs would be fairly boring. I have to say, she got a little defensive about my reaction to the Halloween playlist idea, which surprised me and made me feel a bit guilty that I was so dismissive, especially when she reported regretfully that she is only “allowed” to play Monster Mash on the air (she’s a DJ) once a year, although that seems like plenty to me.

However, my guilt pang prompted me to conduct a tiny bit of research (meaning that I Googled “Halloween songs”), and when I realized that I didn’t have to come up with literal Halloween songs but could focus more on the devil and other themes commonly found in rock and pop music, I warmed up to the idea. I came up with the following songs in my iTunes library that could possibly be interpreted as having a loose association to something vaguely related to Halloween. There you go- me celebrating the “holiday” after all!

• “Devil’s in the Jukebox” – Ray LaMontagne & The Pariah Dogs
• “If You’re Goin’ Through Hell” – Rodney Atkins
• “Spooky” – Joan Osborne
• “Halloween” – Dave Matthews Band
• “See You in My Nightmares” – Kanye West, feat. Lil Wayne
• “Voodoo” – The Neville Brothers
• “Electric Child of Witchcraft Rising” – New Pornographers
• “Candy Everybody Wants” – 10,000 Maniacs
• “The Long Black Veil” – Johnny Cash
• “Psycho Killer” – Talking Heads
• “Lady Dada’s Nightmare” – MGMT

By the way, the picture is courtesy of my more spirited sister, Maggie.  If you enjoy this blog, join me on Facebook.

1 comment:

  1. And just think...I am also planning on subjecting the family here in Co to a "bad Christmas sweater" party this year! :) K

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