I have a confession. As much as I love Christmas — and I super love Christmas, what with all the cozy decor and great songs and many many cookies — I’m still pining for another. A dark and mysterious stranger who sticks around for a month in the fall and then leaves promptly on November 1. I’m speaking, of course, of Halloween, aka the Greatest of All Holidays. Yes, ya girl is always sad to see Spooky Season come and go. And so when I saw this adorable idea about how to meld my two favorite holidays together, I was full of double the holiday cheer… like, double-holiday cheer.
TikTok creator Maddy (@maddycarol11) recently created a video about a new holiday tradition she’s started: buying ornaments for the tree based on her daughter’s Halloween costume that year.
“The first year of my daughter’s life she was Bob Ross,” she explains, holding up the decoration and then showing a picture of the corresponding Halloween costume. “The second year she was Ariel. Last year she was Wednesday Addams, [and] this year was the first time she had a baby sister, and her sister was Zero and she was Jack Skellington.”
I am extremely here for this melding of the holidays, and so were Maddy’s followers and commenters. In addition to this eager to start doing it themselves, others attested to the joy this kind of tradition can bring.
“I was in ballet growing up, every year my mom would get a Christmas ornament of the performance or character I was!” one person writes.
“I am 49 and every year my parents got me an ornament that represented whatever I liked or something major that happened, like cabbage patch kid, or when I got braces, got my drivers license,” says another.
So, clearly, the bones of this idea can stretch beyond Halloween, but for those among us who want to keep spooky season alive as long as possible, the costume angle is sort of genius.
Of course this idea can run into some problems. What do you do if your child had an esoteric costume? (For example, this year my daughter was a drag queen of their own design named “Dr. Vicious.”) One commenter suggests hiring a local artist to make one. “They would be so happy to do that!”
What if your child is the same thing over and over ? “Mine would be Spider-Man, Spider-Man, Spider-Man and Spider-Man,” one commenter bemoans. Maddy suggests Spider-Mans (Spider-Men? Spiders-Man? Spiders-Men?) in different poses for that one.
But, overall, just do your best: it’s the thought that counts for this one. And, of course, don’t forget to write the year on the bottom!
