By ELIZABETH BETTENDORF
Published November 7, 2003
Every year when I was growing up in Miami, a mysterious box from the north would arrive at Halloween. It was from my grandmother, wrapped in brown paper bag and addressed to me and my sisteras in her exquisite Palmer penmanship.
The box always contained costumes and penny candy. One year, a witch's hat and cape and a bag of chewy Mary Janes. Another year, a Mary Poppins frock with a pink parasol and a bag of gummy fish or Coke bottles - exotic treats in the tropics from the Marshall Fields candy counter.
Sometimes tucked inside we would find a Halloween decoration: a paper skeleton for the front door, a flashlight with a spooky orange film over the bulb, a pumpkin carving kit.
Halloween night, we roved the neighborhoods with bands of costumed children, filling our bags with jewel-colored jawbreakers and Baby Ruth bars and Pixie Sticks.
Good candy neighbors were distinguished from grumpier inhabitants by whether the porch light glowed or a candle flickered inside a snaggle-toothed jack-o-lantern.
Much to my delight, the Halloween home-decorating craze seems to have gripped the imaginations of otherwise sane adults.
In the tastefully landscaped front yards of people who rarely venture far from xeriscaping or flower beds, proof of Halloween madness.
- Strands of stringy fake cobwebs slung across front gates of million-dollar homes.
- A human skeleton dangling by a noose from a tree ($99.95 price tag still attached).
- An illuminated purple spider the size of a Saint Bernard affixed to the wall of a grand front porch in Hyde Park.
- A big black cauldron with a rubbery hand poking out.
- Lots of witches with broomsticks poking from their posteriors (someone with a sense of humor smashed one into a palm tree).
- A blow-up pumpkin running on an electric generator with a family of ghosts popping out like girls from a birthday cake.
My absolute favorite is a homemade offering: his and her bedsheet ghosts each draped over a porch light. He sports a ball cap and tie; she's suitably attired in a vine-swirled straw hat and corsage at her neck.
When the lights flicker on, they positively glow.
This Halloween craze has proliferated my Davis Islands neighborhood.
And Hyde Park.
And most of Hillsborough County.
And - according to Dell deChant, a religious studies instructor at University of South Florida - all of America.
The author of The Sacred Santa: Religious Dimensions of Consumer Culture (Pilgrim Press, 2002), deChant contends nostalgic boomers indulge their sentimentality by buying tchotchkes and decorations.
DeChant takes notes.
He speaks like a scholar about spooky music CDs, plastic pumpkins and Halloween shot glasses at Walgreens. He's been to stores devoted to Halloween merchandise.
On deChant's own front porch? A motion-activated "scary head" that cackles maniacally when visitors come to call.
"Halloween is bigger this year than last year, and next year it will be even bigger," he says. "It hasn't crashed yet."
I have to admit, I'm not immune to the mania.
I've hung a scarecrow on my front door, strung pumpkin lights in my dining room, displayed a glamorous pink witch with gold hoop earrings in my kitchen.
I own pumpkin sprinkles for cookies.
Black cat cocktail napkins.
A pumpkin mug for sipping coffee.
The other day, I decided this behavior was a little scary and that I needed to decorate with some grown-up sophistication for a change.
Then I thought again. Maybe I'm just a nostalgic boomer.
Or maybe I'm longing for that package from my grandmother to come again in the mail.
The one with all the costumes and department store penny candy.
