Dear Martha: too many costumes

by MARTHA

Dear Martha,

Halloween is coming and it is my holiday. I love it. I come from a family that didn’t fall in line with traditional family holidays but Halloween seemed to have different expectations for me as a child and I was never disappointed. I came up with my own costumes, no help from parents, and I could trick-or-treat with everybody else. I didn’t need to rely on overworked parents with thin resources to meet my needs. As a parent, I go all out around Halloween: parties, costumes, treats, haunted houses, the works.

My two children and I recently moved into a new home and we have a neighbor who I interact with on a regular basis. Our kids are in the same classes, play on the same soccer teams, and attend church together. We seem to interact a lot. We were talking about Halloween and I was telling her my plans. She started asking about the different costumes my kids would be wearing. She told me that in this neighborhood kids are expected to have a different costume for the church trunck-or-treat, the school parade and the neighborhood party that proceeds trick-or-treating. Three different costumes for each child! Is this a thing? Her explanation is that the neighborhood is small and tight and all the same people are at all the functions so it makes sense to have different costumes for each event.

I thought I was all in on Halloween festivities but this seems like too much, even for me. How do I handle this being new to the block?

Signed,

Scared of the Neighbor’s Expectations

Dear Scared of the Neighbor’s Expectations,

I FEEL YOU. HALLOWEEN IS THE BEST! I also love to go all out on costumes and candy and decorations. It’s a good excuse to flex my crafting muscles and get creative. Then add kids to the mix and you have a recipe for real magic. Some of my earliest memories are of putting on a pink polyester princess dress and ringing doorbell after doorbell, my pillow case heavy with loot.

So first things first, don’t forget the reason for the season. Sure, sure, sure, that phrase is usually used in conjunction with the birth of Christ and another competitive holiday, not the one celebrating the undead and other paranormal phenomenon. But the sentiment is still relevant, right? Halloween is a time of imagination and creativity, bonding and community. On top of that, it’s also a great equalizer. Age, race, gender, and other identifying features become unclear and irrelevant. You open your front door and hand a Twix to whatever creatures stand before you: Frankensteins, pirates, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Now, forget your neighbors’ expectations and commit to one great costume for each of your kids. It’s easy to fall down a Pinterest rabbit hole and come out the other end feeling subpar and insufficient. We raise the bar on each other until nothing is good enough. But it’s not about perfection, or going above and beyond. Don’t lose sight of why we go to all this trouble in the first place.

If you make two costumes a year, in two more Halloweens, you’ll have a whole collection of costumes to rotate through.This is a good lesson for your kid to learn, too. More isn’t always more. Make do with what you have now, according to your resources. Enjoy every spooky second regardless. Next time your neighbor asks, just tell her the truth. “I’m only doing one costume a year for each of my kids, but we don’t mind because Halloween is the best most magic fun spooky time of the year.”

Cut yourself some slack. Cut each other some slack, and we’ll all have way more fun.

Yours respectfully,

Martha

If you have a question you’d like Martha to answer, please email it to DearMartha@theUtahBee.com. To read past advice from Martha go here.