Halloween is nearly upon us. Yet how far this intriguing holiday of lore has traversed from the Halloween of our pasts…

(apparently there was a time I was an angel, and there I am, looking somewhat numb, lost, and not at all imbued with angel powers, seated between my Devil brother and Witch sister, at the annual Halloween party held in our church basement.)

… to the commercialized, sexy-fied immersion it has become in the U.S. culture we have now. 

By “culture,” of course, I mean in the biological sense, as in the “culture” growing in a petri dish used in high school science class.

There is nowhere better than my favorite place on the Internet to lay out the precise ways in which this beloved holiday of our youths has transformed since the 1970s.

Our main goal of the night, like everyone else’s, was to compete for who could snag the most sugary junk food. My thing was Reese’s Cups. My brother always came back at the end of the night with a pillowcase full of the best junk food. My other brother’s thing was hard candy. Of course, somebody always got an apple. I don’t know what happened to the apples.

Actually, I think that Angel costume lasted a few years in a row.  I also think that’s the year my parents retired a huge plastic sailor mask my brother liked, because it had been in the attic for so long that he got (warning: link contains disgusting images of the bacteria) thrush after trying it on.

I warned you about that link.

Here is a little Halloween video I made several years ago, using the Magisto app, made up of a compilation of fun scary things.

Happy Halloween!