Genealogy Jottings

Last night I went trick-or-treating, not for myself, but rather to accompany a group of small children. We walked down one block, crossed the street, and went up the other side. By then they had enough candy to last them awhile, so we returned home.

As I pushed the youngest trick-or-treater in his stroller, I was struck by how much the Halloween celebration has changed since I was a child. Of course the youngsters with me did not want to hear about Halloween in those olden days, but someday they might. I should write down and preserve those memories.

Holiday celebrations make up a big part of our lives. We owe it to ourselves to remember our traditions and how they evolve. While kids still go trick-or-treating as they did when I was young, I did not see the huge numbers of children staying out for several hours, unaccompanied by adults, that we saw when I was a child. Costumes are more elaborate now, but they lack the face and vision-obscuring masks we wore. Halloween parties have become popular whereas I do not recall ever attending one as a child. The holiday remains the same, yet different.

I keep a folder of recollections of events from my life. Someday I hope to organize them into a memory book for my descendants. We have a couple of ancestors who did that, and now I savor every detail of those long-ago days. It is time for me to dig out that Reminiscences folder and add a page about Halloween.