My Favorite Holiday

I require neither an excuse nor permission to be weird. But October 31 is the one day each year even the most buttoned-up can let it rip. How did you transform yourself today? If you didn't, why not?

OK, if you didn't get weird today, here are two ideas for next Halloween. If you use either in 2025, make a note to return here and give me a report on how it went. It's OK to steal my stuff but at least have the decency to let me know the results. 

* Have you lived in a well-established neighborhood a long time and paid enough attention through the years to how your neighbors dress? How about a neighborhood party - definitely want to include drinking at this party - where everyone dresses as someone from the neighborhood? Enliven it by awarding a prize to whoever does the best job simulating a neighbor's look/couture. FYI, I suggested this to folks in the first neighborhood where my wife and I owned a home. It didn't take off. However, I'm reasonably sure that happened because I made it too risky for some of my highly hetero male neighbors by suggesting opposite gender roles for costumes. Learn from my mistake and keep the men as other men and the women as other women. Boring, but more likely to launch.  

* Don't think that will work? How about this instead? Why not use Halloween 2025 to dress up as a person of the opposite gender you admire from history? No need to go trick or treating; just don the garb and have some fun. I've always imagined I'd make a great Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, or another of the earliest feminists. Why the opposite gender? Why not? It's Halloween - What other day of the year would you try this?

If either of the above is too tame for you, get your disguised self into Greenwich Village next October 31. Try to stand out there. I dare you.