CARVSMARK

Halloween. The day of treats, costumes, zombies, and discovering that the bag of candy you bought “for the children” has somehow been reduced to three lonely lollipops and a box of raisins. Nobody knows what happened. There will be no investigation. We love it. We hate it. We buy a pumpkin with ambitious plans and then find ourselves standing over it with a kitchen knife, wondering why we have voluntarily added vegetable surgery to an already demanding week. But we go with it. And I think that’s what I love most about Halloween. For one glorious day, we are allowed to play. To be ridiculous. To put on something completely unreasonable and walk into a public building as though this is simply who we are now.

“Yes, I am wearing a cape at the photocopier. Your worksheets will be ready in a moment.”

As adults, we spend so much of our lives being sensible. We answer emails. We schedule appointments. We buy spinach with good intentions and later discover it has become a liquid. Halloween offers a brief escape from all of that. You can be a pirate. A vampire. A giant inflatable dinosaur with the turning radius of a school bus. You can eat chocolate at 9:15 in the morning because it is “seasonal.” And honestly, I respect a holiday with that kind of flexibility.

This Year, the Art Department Is Turning to Crime. This year, my art department and I are dressing up as art thieves. After years of encouraging creativity, respecting the artistic process, and reminding students to put the lids back on the markers, we have apparently decided to explore a new career pathway. Organized crime. But with better composition. There is something wonderfully appropriate about art teachers becoming art thieves. We already spend our days searching for missing objects. The good scissors. The glue sticks. The brand new eraser that disappeared eleven minutes after entering the classroom. We have investigative experience.

We also know how to transport large, awkward objects through a doorway while saying, “Turn it sideways. No, the OTHER sideways.” Frankly, we are qualified. Our actual criminal activity will consist mostly of handing out candy to teenagers, which I imagine will weaken our reputation in the international art theft community. “Did you get the painting?” “No, but we made sure the Grade 10s got chocolate.” “Was the operation compromised?” “Someone needed help with their Photoshop layers.”

Let the Teenagers Have the Candy. I have a particular soft spot for teenagers at Halloween. They occupy this strange middle territory where people are beginning to tell them they are too old for things, while simultaneously reminding them they are too young for almost everything else. Too old to trick-or-treat. Too young for the club night. Old enough to make important decisions about their future. Apparently not old enough to be trusted with the classroom stapler. It is a confusing time.

And underneath the hoodies, the carefully maintained indifference, and the expression that suggests everything is deeply embarrassing, many of them still want to be part of the fun.

They want the costume. The candy. The silly photograph with their friends. They just don’t necessarily want to admit this while standing in a hallway full of witnesses. So, yes, we are handing out candy. If a teenager wants to participate in a little harmless Halloween joy, I am very happy to support that. Come as a vampire. Come as a football player. Come in your regular clothes and tell me you are an exhausted student. Convincing. Excellent character development. Have a chocolate.

There is plenty of time ahead for overpriced dance tickets, uncomfortable shoes, and shouting “WHAT?” over music so loud it rearranges your internal organs. For now, let them have a miniature Kit Kat and a moment of childhood. Growing up already takes enough things away. We don’t need to confiscate the candy as well.

My Halloween Era Began Under a Snowsuit. I have loved Halloween since I was little. My next-door neighbour and I once went out joined together as a three-legged pair. This was the 1980s, when a costume idea apparently required two children, some questionable engineering, and very little consideration of how either of us would manage a set of stairs. We were enthusiastic. We were committed. We were not especially mobile. I remember falling. I remember laughing. I remember consuming sugar with the dedication of an athlete preparing for an event that absolutely no doctor would endorse. And, of course, there was the snowsuit underneath. The Canadian childhood Halloween experience.

You could spend weeks planning a delicate, carefully considered costume, only to have the weather announce that you would be attending as a warmly insulated version of your original idea. A princess? Certainly. A princess with ski pants. A fairy? Beautiful. Your wings are now attached to a winter coat. A terrifying creature from the underworld? Wonderful. Put your mittens on. Our parents were not interested in artistic integrity if it came at the expense of functioning fingers. And fair enough.

There is only so much menace you can project while asking someone to open your chocolate because your hands are frozen. The snowsuit also created a distinctive silhouette. Whatever character you had intended to portray, you arrived at the door looking like a small upholstered chair with ambition. But did we care? Not particularly. There was candy at the next house, and we had a transportation problem to solve.

The Neighbourhood Was the Main Event. For years, I lived in a neighbourhood full of children, and Halloween was properly busy. The doorbell barely had time to recover between visitors. Tiny witches. Tiny superheroes. Tiny creatures whose identities required a detailed explanation from a parent standing three feet behind them. There was always a small child who froze at the crucial moment. They had practised “trick or treat” at home. They knew the script. They understood the assignment. Then the door opened.

Silence.

A parent whispered, “What do you say?” The child stared. “Happy birthday,” they finally offered. Perfect. Have two.

And then there were the children who took “choose one” as the opening position in a negotiation. One small hand would enter the bowl and emerge carrying enough supplies to support a lengthy expedition. Their parent would say, “Just one.” The child would look genuinely surprised that terms and conditions applied.

We would sometimes run out of candy in an hour. An hour! You would buy what looked like an industrial quantity, feel smug about your preparation, and then discover the neighbourhood had produced several hundred additional children since dinner. There is a particular panic that sets in when the bowl gets low. You start mentally inventorying the kitchen. Do we have more chocolate? What about the cupboard? Would anyone accept a granola bar? Then you catch yourself considering a packet of instant oatmeal and realize it is time to turn off the porch light.

Halloween Is Drama Class for the Rest of Us. Perhaps that is another reason I love it: Halloween gives everyone permission to perform. It is the drama class some of us never took, complete with costumes, improvised dialogue, and one person who has committed so thoroughly to their character that ordinary conversation becomes impossible. You ask where the coffee is. They answer in a pirate voice. You regret encouraging the arts. But there is something delightful about watching adults give themselves over to the silliness. These are people who normally discuss budgets and parking arrangements. Now one of them must rotate their entire body to see who is speaking because their costume has no peripheral vision. A person can be extremely competent at their job and still spend part of October 31 trying to retrieve a dropped pen while dressed as a traffic cone. I find that reassuring. We could all use the occasional reminder that dignity is surprisingly difficult to maintain in synthetic fabric.

A Holiday That Understands the Assignment. What I appreciate about Halloween is that its basic invitation is quite manageable: Put on something silly if you feel like it. Enjoy a treat. Say hello to the neighbours. That is a lovely foundation for a celebration.

Of course, we adults can complicate anything. Give us a simple seasonal activity and someone will introduce a coordinated family costume, a professional fog machine, and a pumpkin display requiring structural support. Meanwhile, someone else has drawn a face on an orange. Both households are participating. I support them equally.

You can go all out. You can wear a pair of cat ears. You can admire everyone else’s effort from the comfort of your ordinary trousers. And while the shops would certainly enjoy persuading us otherwise, there is room for a homemade costume, a reused decoration, and a pumpkin with an expression that suggests it has just read its electricity bill. It doesn’t have to be perfect to be fun. That feels like something we should be allowed to remember more often.

The Dead, the Living, and the People Who Ate the Candy Early. There is something curious, too, about the way Halloween brings spooky things into the middle of everyday life. Skeletons on porches. Ghosts in trees. Gravestones beside the hydrangeas. We decorate with the very things that would ordinarily cause considerable concern, then stand beside them discussing the weather.

“Lovely evening.”

“Yes, much warmer than last year.”

“Your dismembered hand looks wonderful.”

“Thank you. Half price.”

Whatever deeper meaning each of us brings to the season remembrance, mystery, a fascination with things we cannot quite explain I like that there is room for laughter alongside it. The world can be frightening enough. Sometimes it helps to give the monster googly eyes and make it hold a bowl of Smarties. And behind all the theatrical cobwebs, there is a very ordinary, very lovely exchange happening. Someone knocks. Someone opens the door. A little kindness changes hands. Usually wrapped in something that is impossible to open while wearing gloves.

So yes, I Am Going to Enjoy Myself. I will be there with my fellow art thieves, embracing our highly suspicious new identities and distributing the evidence one chocolate at a time. I will enjoy seeing what the students wear. I will appreciate the elaborate costumes and the last minute efforts held together by tape, confidence, and a very generous interpretation of the assignment. I will remember being little, tangled up with my neighbour, trying to coordinate our legs while dressed for a possible Arctic expedition. And I will continue to believe that there is value in a day that lets us step outside our usual roles and be a bit ridiculous together. Teachers can be thieves. Teenagers can still be kids. Adults can have fun without first producing a practical reason for it.

So, wear the costume. Admire the crooked pumpkin. Give the teenager the candy. And if you see our art department carrying a painting down the hallway, please remain calm. We probably borrowed it.

Happy Halloween!