Halloween Bash: Day 5 PM with Author Sonya Bateman

 

Thanks for having me over tonight, JoJo – and happy Halloween, everybody!
So, as we all know, Halloween is awesome. It’d be even more awesome for me if I lived in, say, Florida, or Pennsylvania, or anywhere we don’t get two inches of snow on Halloween every other year. Yeah, that’d be fantastic. Because, oddly enough, while most of the country gets to enjoy a wide variety of costuming options, we folks in central New York tend to dress up like... Eskimos. Or Cruella DeVille. Or Storm Troopers, gorillas, lumberjacks – anything that involves layers and/or fur. By October 31, it’s bloody cold out there.

I live in a small town. Our family traditions have always included donning our elaborate homemade (and warm) costumes, piling into the car and driving to the town proper. We spend a few hours traipsing around knocking on doors with scads of other town families – the kids lining up at the doors, the adults hanging back and sharing sips of liquid fire from discreet flasks, rubbing our reddened hands together and trying to cup our cold noses against the wind. The last trick-or-treat stop is always the house on Church Street next to the Presbyterian church, where the elderly man who lives there is always on his porch in his Santa suit, giving out candy canes AND Hershey minis (double candy bonus... from Santa!).

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