By Grace Acosta

Other Voices

I appreciate Thanksgiving, Christmas and Labor Day because a day off is allowed for roasting the turkey, trimming the tree and cranking up the barbecue. Halloween, however, remains a much ado event without time off for your troubles.

This year, Halloween falls on a Wednesday, which is only slightly more convenient for me than having it fall on a Tuesday like it did last year, because my son doesn’t have his piano lesson and my daughter doesn’t have dance class.

Nothing, however, mitigates the fact that Wednesday is a school night and costumes need to be gathered, faces painted, pumpkins carved and children escorted around neighborhoods after dinner so they can collect copious amounts of confection.

Maybe I am just the overreactive type, but it seems to me that Halloween is a much bigger deal than it used to be. For one thing, costumes in my day weren’t $40. Parent groups, even in my strict parochial school, did not affiliate Halloween with devil worship.

Children gobbled up any candy they got because parents didn’t know any better and because back then they weren’t carrying around $4,000 worth of orthodontic hardware in their mouths.

Since my youth, Halloween has become more elaborate and a bit Martha Stewartized. I know a woman whose annual Halloween party includes a large, carved-out pumpkin used as a tureen for homemade chili that is eventually ladled into smaller, carved-out pumpkin chili bowls. A fine red wine is also served. Naturally, the home is a decorative masterpiece employing an “autumn in a haunted house” theme.

How she manages this on a school night is beyond me. I can barely get myself over to Target to get a bottle of green hair dye for the kids.

Not that it isn’t terribly charming and creative. But one thing it ain’t and that is, simple. I admire a Halloween like the one described in “Ramona the Pest” by Beverly Clearly. Ramona dons a witch’s mask, runs around the playground singing, “Yah, yah, I’m a witch,” and gets a doughnut to eat after the school parade. Now that’s a Halloween I can deal with.

I also appreciate the ad hoc party that Mrs. Quimby and Beezus throw for the neighborhood kids. The menu is graham crackers and applesauce and the entertainment is a pretend parade throughout the house. My kind of bash.

I yearn for this kind of simplicity, but I live in the hectic, hyper 21st century, and I don’t think the toothpaste of our cultural landscape is jumping back in the tube anytime soon.

So, what I propose is a national holiday for any day that requires the purchase of a specialized candy product, particularly if See’s manufactures a theme box or bag for it.

Halloween, Valentine’s Day, Easter and Hanukkah immediately come to mind, but there may be others.

Is that asking too much?

None of us has the Martha Stewart staff that comes with the empire, so we all need a little extra help to get these holidays done with panache. And getting them done just right, as Martha will tell you, is a good thing.

Acosta is a Los Altos resident.