Our town has chosen -- and when I say "our town has chosen," I really don't know whom I mean or how this decision came to pass -- to trick-or-treat tonight instead of tomorrow. I don't even know how I know this, but I do. It's a knowledge validated by remarks on the part of cashiers in the various grocery stores we have visited today, to wit: "Are you going trickertreating tonight, honey?" Crispina, who was wearing her "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" costume to run errands, would answer winsomely that yes, in fact she is, thank you.
One checkout lady asked us to guess what her costume was. She wore a sort of metallic-blue cowboy hat with numbers on it, and a t-shirt with more numbers stencilled on it.
Crispina, through the braided-yarn locks of her lion's-mane headdress, studied the woman carefully. "A counting person," she said at last.
"Close!" the lady crowed. "I'm a person you can count on!"
This is what I like about Halloween: there's not another time that I can think of when by consensus people go about in public in costume, and while sometimes the costumes people go about in aren't the kind I would choose, for myself or anyone else, often enough they're clever in the kind of innocent way that's really funny, and I wish I'd thought of them. Epiphany has gone for the concept costume in years past, dressing up as odd socks, for example. Once she went to a party dressed as A Party, with a balloon headdress and a "Happy Birthday" banner strung across her front like a beauty-contestant's sash. And then there's Crispina and "The Lion Sleeps Tonight."
While the younger children trick-or-treat with friends, the teenagers are having a party. I'm not sure how many teenagers are coming to my house; the projected number seems to fluctuate between four and about twenty. As I write this, Epiphany is laboring in the kitchen over a batch of German spice cookies in the shape of pumpkins. We're also having nachos and green jello, because there's something vaguely Halloweeny about green jello, apparently.
The plan is to have a guys-vs-girls pumpkin-carving contest, though we almost had to can that idea (so to speak) for lack of pumpkins. All the grocery stores we visited were sold out already, but there's a Methodist Church over the bridge in Spiny Shoals that sells them every year -- from late September to now, their front lawn is carpeted with pumpkins -- and they weren't sold out yet, so we're good on that score.
There's also the possibility of swing-dancing on the front porch. And, while I couldn't find a pumpkin on my initial peregrinations about town, I did find a small fire-bowl on sale at what was to me an irresistible price. I've been wanting a fire-bowl for years, so now we have one, all set up in the back yard with chairs around it, so the teenagers and others can sit outside and make s'mores under what we can see of the stars, here in the Greater Metropolitan Fiat Area.
Tomorrow, on the actual date of Halloween, the St. Dymphna's Annual Parish All Saints Party takes place. My children look forward to this event with at least as much excitement as they muster for Halloween: another set of costumes to make and personae to adopt, another kind of brush with the mystery which seems to encroach on us with the early darkness, even on ordinary fall afternoons.
On All Saints, Epiphany's going to play Saint Dymphna in a sort of tableau-cum-catacomb affair which our DRE has dreamed up, and which will have children crawling through "tunnels" under tables in the hall between the faith-formation classrooms, to emerge into a new saint-scene in each classoom.
Crispina's going as the Blessed Virgin Mary, Helier as Saint Martin of Tours, and Amicus as . . . To Be Announced. I also need to think of some saint to be. The past two years I've been Saint Helena, a role which more or less announces itself to the mature non-virgin-martyr-type woman, but I do get tired of hauling the big wooden cross around the crowded social hall and trying not to whack people with it every time I turn around.
Here, by the way, is Epiphany's cookie recipe, which comes from the Usborne Little Round the World Cookbook, though she's modified it somewhat (mainly she uses less honey; they are better when they aren't super-sweet):
Lebkuchen
1 egg
1/4 c honey
1/4 c butter
1/4 c soft brown sugar
1 c all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
2 tsp ground ginger
2 tsp cocoa powder
1 tsp mixed spice (cinnamon, nutmeg, clove)
1/3 c powdered sugar
1 TB lemon juice
food coloring to color icing
1. Grease baking sheet. Separate egg. Put yolk in bowl and discard white.
2. preheat oven to 400 (I think. The recipe doesn't actually say.) Stir honey, butter and sugar together in pan over low heat until butter is melted.
3. sift flour, baking powder, cocoa, ginger and spices into bowl. Add egg yolk.
4. mix in wet ingredients -- butter, sugar, honey, and squeeze dough into a ball with your hands.
5. roll out dough to 1/4" thickness and cut with cookie cutters. Put on baking sheet and bake for seven to eight minutes.
6. Sift powdered sugar into a bowl and mix in lemon juice. Stir together to make icing, which can be colored with food coloring as desired. When cookies have cooled, decorate them with icing piped from an icing bag.
These are excellent, delicious cookies -- I haven't made them myself, but Epiphany has been making them at least once a week since she came back from Germany a little over a month ago, and they turn out beautifully every time. I think the cookbook from which we got this recipe is out of print, but you can find a very similar one here, if you're interested (in the interest of full disclosure, that's my Usborne website).
Off now to watch a video on face-painting which came with a kit we got . . . or maybe I'll just go outside and sit by the firepit in the sunshine and wait for night to fall.
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