As October 31 gets near, I find myself getting nostalgic, as I do every year. Halloween, in the “good old days” was just a heck of a lot more fun.

Maybe part of it was that my mother loved to make costumes. I don’t really remember choosing what I was going to be for Halloween. Mom just got an idea from something she unearthed from the rag bag or the cedar chest or some hand-me-downs. She was an talented seamstress, having taught herself how to sew when she was very young. A yellow towel inspired my Dole banana costume, an excess of fake fur produced the owl you see above. At any rate, the costumes were never “off-the-rack” in any way.

Maybe part of it was that regular school was cancelled after lunch. We would get dressed in our costumes and move our desks into a circle so we could play games. This was after we paraded through every other classroom showing off what we were wearing. And then a teacher would decide who had the best costume. Someone probably cried when they didn’t win. (Maybe it was me.) But it was okay because then we would then eat all the cupcakes our mothers sent with us that day and remember that the best part of Halloween was yet to come.

Maybe part of it was growing up in a very small town. (At the time, it was a village so yes, it actually was a village that raised us.) We would go home on the bus first so that we could adjust our costumes to wear them over our parkas, because: Alberta. It was gonna be cold because we were gonna stay out and trick-or-treat until we got the job done.

Maybe part of it was always meeting at our town cousins’ house. Halloween was never about friends: this was a relative-only event. The five or six of us would start there, pillowcases in hand (because cloth shopping bags weren’t invented yet and handles are for pansies) and meticulously visit every house in town. Even the ones that turned their lights off.

Maybe part of it was because we sang at every house. What’s that? you say. You SANG? Yup, we had a repertoire. And it was our belief that our singing is what opened even the darkened door.

Halloween! Halloween! Oh what funny things are seen! Witches’ hats! Coal black cats! Broomstick riders, mice and rats!

Maybe part of it was that we knew that halfway through the night we could land in at our Baba’s house and get fortified with Sprite and extra candy (because obviously, we were lacking the necessary sugar to soldier on) before she sent us on our way with full-size chocolate bars in our pillowcases.

Maybe part of it was that by the time we had canvassed the last house and dragged our full pillowcases back to the town cousins’ house, it was deliciously dark and we knew we weren’t done yet. At their house, we’d eat the popcorn balls that Auntie always made and inspect our loot and maybe make a trade or two. Then someone from the farm would drive in to pick us country cousins up.

Maybe part of it was that at home, Mom gave us each a cake pan to “organize” our treats (or was that just me?) and then let us store it under the bed and didn’t police us. But somehow, the candy always lasted. And the candy? There were things you never saw any other time of the year. Half-size chocolate bars or bags of chips or licorice that only appeared in the days before Halloween (and not the day after Canada Day.)

Maybe (maybe?) we ate way too much sugar in one day. Maybe it affected my memory. Or maybe, just maybe, it was Halloween that was that much sweeter in the good old days.