holiday hullaballoo

For years, my dad has been in charge of the ‘passing out the Halloween candy’ task at the house. And he takes this job very seriously. Not because of any concern for the dental hygiene and strict adherence to the recommended daily allowance for candy consumption. And not because of a militant ‘one piece, one person’ rule. Rather, he has turned Halloween into a marketing research bonanza. My father, who is neither in the marketing nor research fields, must, on some level, feel that he missed his true calling and spends this one night every year making up for it.

At the final doorbell chime each Halloween at 8:00, he would retreat to the den. And while most other fathers were secretly sneaking candy bars from their children’s stash, mine was hard at work crunching numbers related to the annual outflow of candy.

What percentage of kids preferred Kit-Kats to Butterfingers? Were Skittles a more popular choice than M&Ms? Statistically, do boys tend to prefer Reese’s cups over girls? And does this imply that boys may have a peanut gene that is missing in the female population? These are all questions that my father felt compelled to answer each Halloween. The results of which were gone over in pain staking detail at the breakfast table the next morning. And, feigning support, we would all pause in mid-bite to ponder the significance of these findings and the implications that they held for the candy eating world.

The information was then safely stored until the next year when, based upon the candy trends that he found, he would determine what brands to purchase and distribute. For me, however, Halloween was always the start of a two month long holiday bonanza. One which started with the collection of candy, had a large turkey dinner mid-way through, and ended with the unwrapping of glorious presents that sat, in waiting, underneath the Christmas tree.

One year when still very young, I headed out with mom in my brand new, still smelling of plastic, Batman costume to begin the holiday season with a healthy dose of candy. This happened to be the year when Hershey bars were preferred over Nestle Crunch bars by a ratio of three to one. In preschool the year before, my tiny brain had been fully saturated with all the various holidays during this two month span. In an attempt to multi-culturalize the class, we were introduced to Rosh Hashana, Kwanza, Ramadan, Chanukah, and many other holidays that I have never heard of since.

With all these holidays vying for attention in my head, it was only natural that they would all start blending and seeping into one another. And, at one of the many houses I visited that night, I started back down the front steps after selecting a Tootsie Roll from a large bowl of candy when I remembered my mom’s insistence on manners and how neither threats of tricks if not given treats nor ghouls walking around the neighborhood, were an acceptable excuse to be rude.
So I spun back around and shouted up to the lady in the doorway, “Thank you! Happy Chanuween!” before running off down the sidewalk.

And, while my study of Judaism consisted exclusively of dreidel spinning throughout my elementary years in school, I seem to remember that Hanuween was the ritual where the ancient Hebrews would dress up as golden calves and walk around for eight nights, knocking on the doors of the Egyptians and asking for slices of mannah. But my attention span was severely limited due to excessive amounts of sugar introduced into the bloodstream around this time. So I may be confusing this with some other holiday.