Halloween Traditions in the Country of Suburbia

For the last two years that I've lived in the suburbs of Dallas,
I've discovered some interesting traditions that are practice.

You basically put together a Halloween gift bag of goodies
with a special poem and a sign...

and then doorbell ditch the bag anonymously.

Once you've been hit, you get to put up this sign on your door:

And then it's your responsibility to carry on the event...
and hit two more neighbors with these surprises.

My mom (who we live with) decided to START it this year.

She likes to instigate things.

And she recruited my two hooligans to deliver the goods in the dark.

They loved it.

They snuck into neighbors yards and rang doorbells and ran.

And then we didn't put up a sign, hoping we get hit back in return.

And we did.
A few nights later.

Did you know about this Halloween tradition?
Have you ever participated?
Have you ever instigated?!

Breaking Up Christmas

Our family tradition, inherited from my maternal grandmother, is that it's bad luck to have the Christmas tree still in the house on New Year's Day. So I've spent all day deconstructing the ten foot fir that only a few weeks ago we were adorning.

It's a slow and contemplative process and gives me time to reconnect with each ornament as I remove it from the tree and lay it on the dining table to await the final boxing up and stowing away for another year. Old friends, these decorations, from the blue glass ball with my brother's name staggering across its surface, the glitter long gone, to the somewhat lurid pink and blue globe -- the last of a box of ornaments my mother purchased from my then boyfriend, now husband, in 1959 when his high school club was selling ornaments as a fund-raiser.

There are the simple stuffed fabric hearts that were a mainstay of the decorations when our boys were young and our dogs and cats rambunctious and there are two boxes of fragile glass ornaments inherited from my mother. A green wooden curtain ring with the figure of a baby on it marks our older son's first Christmas in 1972 and simple felt cutouts sprinkled with glued-on sequins commemorate our younger boy's stint as a Clover Buddy (FFA for the grammar school bunch.) There's a plaster Santa, carefully painted with tempera paints by my husband when he was a cub scout, and a wooden angel that was a gift from the homeroom mother when I was an eighth grader.

The satin ribbons are untied and taken upstairs to be ironed; the cranberry and popcorn is slid off the thread into a bucket for the chickens; the strings of lights are pulled off and the tree is toppled and dragged out of the house. Only a slight fragrance of fir remains -- and we are safe from bad luck for another year.