Halloween is my favourite holiday of all. Better than Christmas, better than even my birthday. I know, I know, Christmas has all that cheer and family and presents, and my birthday is all about me, which I like, but there is just something about Halloween that I love. It's not just the candy (especially smarties and rockets). What I love the most about Halloween is the dressing up. Perhaps it is a hold over from my favourite childhood game when I would don the costume of a princess, or peasant, or whatever struck my fancy.

That was fun, but it is even more fun to dress up as an adult. An adult can add that extra edge of humour or wit into the costume. The costume can even provide an in-your-face type of mentality. One Halloween I crashed an All Saints Day party. There was apparently some resistance to celebrating with a more pagan and witchy type of name, so in response, I dressed as a martyred saint complete with a line of blood around my neck where my head had been cut off... perhaps my beheading resulted from protecting my virginity. Fortunately, good humour abounded and no one was offended (actually, I was a little disappointed by that fact).

This Halloween I dressed as a 1950's pin-up girl. It was only later that I read an article in the Globe and Mail about the slutty costumes and the rise of raunch in females as a kind of feminist backlash. Mea culpa. Oh well, I am after all, only human.

And now, I'm off in search of another excuse to dress up...