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"My Holiday Has a First Name. It’s H-A-L-L-O…"

October 31st, 2006

Macky: Mama, is today Christmas?

Me: No, Macky. But it is Halloween!

(Pause.)

Macky: Mama, Christmas is its last name.

This photo is one in a series of otherwise unusable pics of my children flailing about. This one was taken just after I yelled, fully in the holiday spirit: “Okay, NOBODY’S going trick-or-treating until I get a GOOD photo! Do you hear me?!”

PLUS: Halloweeny links from two of my favorite human beings on the planet: Miriam Peskowitz, who writes of conservative religious boycotts of Halloween: “…don’t get hung up on the negatives. Slide around them, laugh. Find your own ways, enjoy what’s ‘pagan’ and secular and American and good…”, and Brett Paesel, with an all-too-familiar look at the underachieving holiday parent: “Halloween presents a particular kind of challenge for the underachieving mom…I’m the mom who brings paper napkins for the school potluck. I recently had to buy all of my allotted raffle tickets for a school fundraiser because I forgot to sell them to my friends. Last week, during show-and-tell, my 3-year-old son elaborately opened his fists to reveal that he had brought ‘nothing’ to show because I forgot that Wednesday is the day kids drag in their loot.”

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