Halloween and Whoever Organised It

Halloween doesn't just happen. Someone made it happen.

Someone, in the week before, checked what the costumes situation was and discovered that last year's didn't fit and there was a decision to be made. Someone researched what was happening locally — which streets, which estates, what the expected trick-or-treat routes were, whether it was the kind of neighbourhood where this was done. Someone bought the sweets for the door. Someone found the good bowls and the right lighting and created the minimal amount of atmospheric effort that makes a house look like the kind of house children should knock on.

That someone is not named on any of the packaging. Her name doesn't appear on the candy corn or the jack-o-lantern she found in the back of the cupboard in October.

Halloween is Christmas in miniature: an occasion that presents itself as appearing naturally and requires, in practice, several weeks of invisible preparation by one adult on behalf of the household. The execution is visible. The planning is not.

This year the costumes were his. I handed him the category in September: Halloween is yours to sort. He sorted it. There was a brief moment in mid-October when I almost checked whether it had been sorted, and I caught myself and didn't, and it was sorted.

Small experiment, successful. Custody of occasions can be transferred.