Halloween, Día de los Muertos and Holloweening

Why? ¿Por qué? Why is it that when we mix religion and cultural nationality there is confusion?

I was a child who grew up with Halloween. I would put on hoaky costumes and wear hoakier masks, and make a fool of myself.

Yeah, around the same time, we would go to the cemetery de St. Anthony and clean up the graves of our relatives, wiping out the weeds and putting up some flowers that my mother had fashioned of crepe paper, wire and god knows what else, and eucalyptus leaves that for reasons still too mysterious for me to fathom were coated with wax.

We would kneel and pray a rosary around the aging graves of our ancestors, and pretend that they were in a better place.

They weren’t. They were dead. And the place stunk of funeric gas. It is the unmistakable smell of death.

What’s so hard to understand?

As a kid, I did wear simple costumes, dressing up in ways that would never fool any of our neighbors, and carry a bag to collect my goodies. Great lesson to teach to kids, right? Disguise them, and make them cheaply bought-off extortionists or they will wreak havoc on you or your property.

Trick or treat?

Anyway, throughout college, I learned about creative Holloweening.

Costumes became far more inventive. It got beyond a little face painting, a cheap rubber mask or a sheet with eye-holes. I remember a girlfriend who created a huge palm-like contraption she put on her head, and the she pasted pages from a desk calendar all over her sleek black body suit. She was hot. And she was a date palm.

In short, it got serious.

At the San Antonio Light, there were no official Halloween proceedings. But when it died and the Hearst Corporation ordered their new minions to hire Latinos as well as Anglos and I got a job, I got a job there and found a form in my corporate mailbox.

At the Express-News, they had not only discovered Halloween but also Día de Los Muertos, to the point that our intrepid managing editor ordered a photog to spend the entire night at a panadería to document the making of pan de muerto. Until I introduced him to it, he had never heard of it.

Anyway, at the Express-News, my form said, “Halloween contest participant, there will be a contest and you will have to fill out this form to be eligible for the $25 prize.”

Well, $25 is $25, I thought. Ain’t much but that and a 20 percent tip will pay for a cheap date, and who knows, I might get lucky — it being Día de los Muertos and my age and all.

But the next open line was challenging.

“What are you coming as? Describe your costume.” Three blank lines followed.

I thought about it, having already filled out my name, and I wrote: “I will be coming as the Invisible Man.”

Then, on Halloween, I took the day off.

And I didn’t win the costume prize. Probably because no one saw my get-up. Or me. Chingao, sometimes you just can’t please anyone!

Damn! Sometimes, you just can’t win!