Because Halloween fell on a Saturday, the day had an especially festive quality, with more people out on the streets in the daylight. I passed a caveman couple with their Superman son. A sexy kitty mom accompanied a young vampire of five or so. I was struck by how few ghosts and goblins there were. In Mexico, November 2 is celebrated as the Day of the Dead. The holiday is an occasion to remember and venerate the dead, to give them their proper due. People build altars honoring the deceased. They visit graves with marigolds and sugar skulls and the deceased’s favorite foods, much the way the Egyptians did in the Beautiful Feast of the Valley. By contrast, the American Halloween is mostly about candy and horror films. Even the plastic ghosts fluttering from doorways seem goofy rather than ghoulish. One Halloween, when I was about seven, my mother was irritable after school and took a short nap before we went trick-or-treating. I got that crestfallen feeling children get. I was going to be a bad fairy, but I had no wand.
