I hate spiders.
I’ve always hated them. When I was young, I had an awesome two-story playhouse in my yard, but Daddy Long Legs loved the wooden structure as much as I did. It seemed anytime I played in there, one would end up on me. The feeling of a creepy crawly on my person always caused me to run out screaming. And I haven’t changed my mind as I’ve aged, either.
Unfortunately for me, during the Halloween season, spiders are all over the place. Sure, they’re fake but they still really, really freak me out. They’re hanging above grocery store doors, so I have to do my business elsewhere. They come home on toy rings, making me afraid to open my kids’ backpacks. They’re on cereal boxes that I’m now hesitant to touch.
Skeletons don’t creep me out; witches are fine. Zombies and Frankenstein’s monster are fictional creatures and I’m fine encountering fake ones in the wild at this time of year. But spiders are living, breathing things (do they breathe? I refuse to Google them, or willingly learn anything about them) that lurk in dark corners and create sticky, creepy-looking webs and are generally not pleasant to be around. Why are they everywhere during Halloween? You don’t usually see snakes or wasp nests used as decorations, so why are spider webs OK?
I wouldn’t say I have arachnophobia-level fears of arachnids (according to the Cleveland Clinic, anywhere from 3 to 15% of the population does), but I definitely avoid them when I can. My kids are forbidden to tease me about it, and I leave the room when we watch Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and Harry and Ron encounter the huge spiders in the Forbidden Forest.
Perhaps that’s why I’ve never liked Halloween. I dressed up in costume with my friends and collected treats as a child to avoid being left out (and, of course, to get candy), but as soon as I hit adulthood I was done with Halloween. “Come to our costume party!” invitations were promptly rejected. Please contact me when you’re hosting an ugly Christmas sweater party.
But after I had kids, I realized there’s nothing better than a tiny person being dressed up in a Tigger costume and bouncing around your house or a 4-year-old dressed up in a full-on T-Rex suit. The cuteness factor of a baby in any piece of clothing that features ears is worth anything we have to deal with to get there.
And so, my first Halloween as a mom I put my 4-month-old child in a pumpkin costume with an orange hat and we headed to a pumpkin patch where we took approximately 3,700 photos. The next year, I led a small monkey around our neighborhood to collect candy that was mostly consumed by his father and me. And now my kids love Halloween, so every year we go all out. We’re baking pumpkin loaf and drinking cider and visiting corn mazes and the kids are asking to hang ghosts on our porch basically as soon as school starts.
I attend their costume parades. I volunteer at their school parties. And as a kid who grew up with hand-me-down costumes or homemade costumes I hated, I would even consider dressing up myself if they asked me to. They’ve so far rejected my suggestion we do a family Star Wars theme. I’d happily be Rey or Leia if my husband would dress up as Darth Vadar and we could get our toddler a Yoda costume.
And I do love decorating for a holiday, even my least-favorite one, so every fall I pull three dusty bins out of my basement full of black cats, old McDonald’s chicken nugget toys with costumes you can change out, and any number of pumpkins in all shapes and sizes and our house is transformed.
You won’t find a spider anywhere among my decorations, though. And if I see them on other people’s houses when we trick-or-treat, I may just have to skip that one.
Lauren Davidson is a Pittsburgh-based writer and editor focusing on parenting, arts and culture, and weddings. She has worked at newspapers and magazines in New England and western Pennsylvania and is a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh with degrees in English and French. She lives with her editor husband, four energetic kids, and one affectionate cat. Follow her on Twitter @laurenmylo.
