It's the most horrifying time of the year

We've reached the time of year when I'm going to have to stop taking my little people out in public, for their sake and everyone else's.

Yes, it's Halloween time, and decorations are everywhere. And not just any decorations, but the most horrifying, vile, creepy pieces of you-know-what I've ever seen. Hello, my neighbors, a.k.a. The Holiday House, have a yard-wide depiction of a pirate graveyard, complete with skeletons crawling up out of the earth. And these same neighbors will be decorating for Christmas with enough lights to create daylight on the entire block as soon as Halloween is over. What in the world? What's a girl to do when she just wants to get these little people out of the house to ride bikes and we can't go more than a few houses down? I remember seeing this kind of nonsense when I was a kid and being terrified to go to sleep at night.

I try really hard to explain things to my little people by going back to the origins, especially when it comes to holidays that we as a family choose not to celebrate. But we were out today and I have a horrible headache and some serious sinus congestion (thank you, up and down Texas weather), and when my people asked (LOUDLY, by the way) about all the disgusting decor, I popped out with the generic, "It's for Halloween, which is a bad holiday to celebrate the devil." Oh my word. It happened, and it didn't do me any good, by the way, because I haven't ever even discussed the devil with them or blamed anything on him...

By the time we got to Target and had to stroll past aisles with Halloween items (with people browsing, mind you), I was fielding comments made at full-volume.
"Mommy, WHY IS HALLOWEEN BAD?"
"Mommy, WHY DO PEOPLE LOVE THE DOUBLE (because that's his name now, "the double" - that's what Milo heard and I didn't even bother to correct him).
"Mommy, DOES THAT LADY OVER THERE KNOW THAT HALLOWEEN IS BAD?"

And all the while, Lucy is telling Milo (also at full volume), "EWWWW, Milo. EWWWW. That's GROSS. Don't look at that stuff, IT'S SO GROSS. Josie Grossie."

You're welcome, Halloween shoppers, for the good laugh while you picked out your items. I'm sad that America makes such a commercial success out of scaring tiny people, but that's my personal opinion, so you're free to leave it. I guess it's time for another sit-down with my little people, this time about the Druid origins of Halloween. And I might as well throw the devil in there, just for fun. But this is just one of the many reasons we're moving to a farm in the middle of nowhere any day now.