Happy Halloween!

And the rest of Hallowmas, too, for those of you celebrating it! No, Blogger spell-check, I did not make up that word.

I attempted to Goth myself up for the day, but owing to the lack of black nail polish and hair dye, I think I came out an alchemist instead:

black, red, silver, open flame,
and yes, I kind of AM a big dork.
This costume needs an alembic*, though. Hmm.

Maia, as you may see from the picture, is going as a cat who would never, ever submit to costuming (and Lou will probably go as a guy who is in the middle of a huge project for work and therefore didn't have time to change after the office). We're all prepared for our usual one trick-or-treater. We humans are, anyway; Maia's dogma includes the statement that "If anyone should welcome a stranger at the door, let him be anathema."

In honor of this year's world-ravaging flood of Halloween debate posts, most of them roiling with unrecognizable shards of history and dangerously pointed agendas, here's the clearest and most factually-sound article I've ever seen on the relationship between Christianity and the night of October 31: Martha of Ireland's Reclaiming the Reclamation, over at Internet Monk.

Also: Christie has spent the week celebrating at her mommy/lifestyle blog, because Halloween is her favorite holiday. The Hog's Head has run a full week of debates on which Harry Potter book is the scariest (I still think it's Chamber of Secrets), and Kristina Horner and friends threw a wicked awesome Potter-themed Halloween party to trump all wicked awesome Potter-themed Halloween parties. The drinks are my favorite part; they served everything from firewhisky to Amortentia to flesh-eating slug repellent to Veritaserum. I might have to try out some of those recipes for future episodes of the H.P.B.C.

Happy Halloween!

* And possibly spectacles, and a lab coat or something. Yeah. I suck at this.