I'm a Punkin...

This is my son's first Halloween, which is important because I need to begin training him now to recognize the importance of this Holiday, which as far as I can tell is based upon the seemingly mutually exclusive conditions of terror and gluttony. Other US holidays have come to adopt gluttony, like Easter (second only to Halloween in terms of sugar consumption) and Christmas (Okay, one more Christmas cookie, since you have 30 dozen left), but there isn't a lot of terror in either of those.

Silent Night. Maybe it's too...silent.

So in that way, Halloween really is unique.

Some Christians get all worked up about the origins of the holiday being all wicked, but when I was a kid, I don't ever remember having someone sit me down and telling me the "true meaning of Halloween." As you know, Halloween traces its origins back more than 2,000 years to the Druids, an ancient religious cult that constructed Stonehenge as well as most of the public toilets in England. The Druids believed that one night each year, at the end of October, the souls of the dead returned to the world of the living and roamed from house to house costumed as Power Rangers.

I don't remember anybody ever mentioning Druids. And if they did, I would have corrected them saying, "It's pronounced "droid". And yes, I am wearing my C3PO under-roos."

All I remember is the candy. Which brings me to the parenting aspect of Halloween. As you know, man was never made to consume so many sweet tarts in one month, but with proper training, I believe my son can do it. Also, I will work dilgently to ensure that my son will be able to open up Pixie Sticks and actually consume their contents, unlike the thousands of other youth across the nation, who spend Oct. 31st in sheer frustration that that cannot get any of the sugar-coated sugar out of the paper straw.

"I tore off the end, but my saliva has congealed the sugar and it's plugging the...let me try the other end. Curses!"

You know, on an off tangent and totally un-related, I have never really liked dressing up. I mean, when I was a kid, it was fun, but once I reached like 9 or 10, I just stopped thinking it was fun. And in college and stuff, I never cared for it. It wasn't that I didn't enjoy watching other people's creativity at Halloween parties. "Oh, wow. you're a geyser. Yes, I would imagine that the steam is dangerous."

I suppose people with identity problems don't care for Halloween a whole lot. But that does not mean that I don't think Halloween is fun with Justus. We decided to dress up our son, go to a pumpkin patch, buy a pumpkin and drink cider. How very Autumn of us. You can't do that kind of thing in the Spring. They'll bust your butt if you try that kind of stunt.

So Nicole and I pulled an Anne Geddes and made Justus look like a gourd.

Here is a Quicktime video of the lad, in case you're interested in seeing how cute he is.