"I call you up and ask you if you'ld like to go with me and see a movie."

"Spooky"

Classics IV, 1968

Halloween is my birthday. I was born at the tail end of the first half of the 20th Century (1950) on top of a firehouse and underneath a jail -- it was a three-story municipal building with a hospital on the second floor.

I've always reasoned that its a good day for a birthday, a day after my uncle's birthday and the day before my delivering doctor's, as everyone, at least when you are a kid, celebrates.

I've gone through being called a spook and such, which is okay. I have not met but two other people who share my birthday, one being a World War II invalid, and the other being the daughter of a Baptist preacher who was a year my junior.

As I've gotten older, the novelty has worn off to some extent, but I have my memories.

The earliest I recall was party with my cousin, Helen, in which we both dressed for Halloween. Somewhere, I'm sure, there is still a black and white photo of us with our masks on and wrapped in a scratchy dark blue wool blanket.

Then there was the joint celebration with the previously mentioned Baptist preacher's daughter, a photo of which was taken outside the smokehouse door.

In fourth grade a particularly cool teacher, who had a giant doll named Alloween, hosted a Halloween party at her trailer house. I dressed as a skeleton, and they sang "Happy Birthday." That was in 1960.

That was also the last time any kind of big deal was made about my birthday, which, again, is okay. But when I get trick or treaters, I ask for a trick -- singing "Happy Birthday" -- before giving a treat. It's amazing how few people know what the meaning of "trick" is in the trick-or-treating tradition -- show me your trick, then I'll treat you.

The holiday itself goes back to the ancient pre-Chrsitian Druidic fire festival, called Samhain, celebrated in Scotland, Wales and Ireland and signaling the end of summer -- appropriate for a descendant from the House of Stewart. It actually starts at sunset on Oct. 31, and runs until sunset on Nov. 1, and was believed to be a day the Druids though the World of the Ancestors was drawn aside. With Christianity, the festival was turned into Hallowe'en, with All Hallows or All Saints Day on Nov. 2, and All Souls Day on Nov. 2.

In Celtic society, Samhuin, from Oct. 31 to Nov. 2, was a time when order and struture were abolished, with men dressing as women and women as men, gates being unhinged, horn-blowing, and children knocking on neighbors' doors for food and treats, which still continues in the tradition of tirck-or-treating.

Incidentally, a common treat today, apples or nuts, hails back to that time as well. Asking for candy became popular in fairly recent times.

Another custom, fall being the traditional time of harvest and butchering, was feasting.

In Medieval times in Ireland and the British Isles, costumed celebrants were often adults and older teens who would go from house to house demanding beer and munchies in exchange for performances which mixed Pagan and Chrsitan themes. Being stingy was considered bad luck, violating ancient laws of hospitality.

In the 1800s in America, immigrants from Ireland and Scotland kept many of the customs, with girls staying indoors doing devination games and boys roaming outdoors enganging in ritualized pranks which adults "blamed" on spirits being abroad that night.

In the 1930s adults began tryign to control the vandalism by organzing safer events and bribing children as a way to distract them. In the 1980s, it go worse with a violence-saturated culture and unemployed teenage males, slipping from shaving cream and toilet paper to serious vandalism and assaults.

Still, Halloween, aside from exorcising fears of death and ghosts and goblins, today has the benefit of interchange with strangers and neighbors we may not even see during the rest of the year.

And, it can be fun, like the American kids' chant for the holiday, "Jingle bells, Batman smells, Robin laid and egg," which is a new tradition.