Postcards from the Rogue Valley

I used to think that the question, ”What are you going to be for Halloween?” applied to kids, not grownups, and certainly not parents.

In the 1950’s, when I was growing up in New Jersey, Halloween was not a family affair. I couldn’t imagine my mathematician father getting into the action, waddling down Princeton’s main street in an inflatable dinosaur costume or my mother waving at onlookers while wearing a laundry basket filled with lingerie —nor, I’m sure, could they. 

What I remember, actually, was the night before Halloween, called Mischief Night, when my friends and I (then pre-teens) roamed the neighborhood putting trick before treat. 

Our first fall in Ashland, when pumpkins started to appear on the town’s porches and a neighbor erected a fifteen-foot skeleton on his front lawn, we got wind of one of Ashland’s claims to fame we hadn’t heard about: one of the best Halloween parties west of the Rockies.

I was warned, “It’s mostly a party for grownups.” 

“I prefer the trick-or-treating — really the treats,” my eight-you old neighbor Kiva told me.

As is my want, I did some research.

It’s a family affair

Technically called the Children’s Halloween Celebration and sponsored by the Ashland Chamber of Commerce, the parade was originally intended for the 12 and under set. Adults soon joined the fun — first parents marching alongside their kids, expanding to include adults marching childless (that is, without the beneficial supervision of kids or grandkids).

Then, apparently, the adults — albeit some not all — got rowdy.

“There will be no official caravan of goblins, ghouls and every other costume imaginable this Halloween in Ashland,” the local Mail Tribune announced in September 2011, under the headline, “Ashland cancels popular Halloween parade.” For years, the city’s annual parade had drawn thousands of onlookers., it noted.

According to the Chamber of Commerce: “The type of feedback that the Chamber of Commerce was getting from parents was that their kids weren’t having any fun in the parade … that children felt intimidated.” 

Although the parade rules were clear — participants’ costumes could not include any nudity, profanity, lewdness, illegal drugs, violence, obscenity, racism or offensive content — too many of the costumes were not “appropriate for a family audience,” the Chamber said.

“Our only true intention is to provide kids in Ashland with the best Halloween experience possible.”

A week later, the Chamber announced it would reinstate the parade after being bombarded with letters and phone calls from sad or angry parents and children.

“We were surprised to find out how many people loved the parade, especially how many children loved it. It was so great to see the community respond like it did,” the Chamber explained. “People called it a family affair.”

(My Tai Chi teacher, whom I saw on the way to this year’s parade, filled me in on some of the gorier details from the past — e.g., grown men with bloodied swords through their skulls or eyeballs hanging from their sockets. A friend told me about a well-known female celebrant with more cleavage than Dolly Parton.)

This year’s parade

I was a bystander at Ashland’s Halloween parade the first two years we lived here but, like everyone else in the world, I got sidetracked by COVID. This year, I figured it was time to rejoin the party (not as a participant but as an onlooker). 

The faux reporter in me had two questions: Would inflatables left over from the recent “No Kings” protest in Medford have a second coming in the Ashland Halloween parade? Would grownups — mindful of good behavior — still overshadow the kids?

The answers emerged quickly. The first marchers I met were two inflatable pink and blue dinosaurs. I asked one if the costume was a leftover from “No Kings.”  “Yes, alas,” the creature answered. “Maneuvering and seeing out of this thing is a b*.  I keep asking myself, why couldn’t I just settle for Spiderman,” he said.

Then I heard a small boy, wearing his own inflatable dinosaur, let out a shriek. “What’s wrong,” I asked. “My parents lost me,” he sobbed. 

Meanwhile, a cabal of chatting witches nearby asked, “What’s the scariest thing in the world?” Given the crowd, you may have guessed the answer: “Donald Trump!”

I struck up a conversation with the middle-aged woman next to me, poised like me on the curb trying to see as much as we could. “This is maybe the biggest crowd I’ve ever seen at this event,” she told me. “And believe me, I’ve been to many.”

“Do you think it’s the Trump effect,” I asked, “looking for a good time in the face of so much bad?” 

“I’d like to think of it as a festive DEI response,” she said.

“Conceptual Genius Goes As Self For Halloween”

Soon the high school band appeared, and with a motorcycle escort and the protection of a city policeman dressed for the apocalypse, the teenagers grabbed their instruments and headlined the six-block parade through Ashland’s downtown. 

A dog dressed as a princess got tangled in a stroller ferrying, well, a fairy. (Reportedly, Americans spent an estimated $700 million on Halloween costumes for their pets in 2024, with the pumpkin, the hot dog, and the bumble bee top picks.)

My tai chi teacher passed by, sporting a t-shirt that said: “Conceptual Genius Goes As Self For Halloween.” 

This year’s parade lacked the unicyclists and acrobats that have entertained in the past but the performance by one fifty-something man, shaking his pillow-stuffed bootie and tummy, certainly grabbed attention.

“Here I am. I came to play. Belly, bootie, yo like jelly. Get your Halloween dream, it makes you want to S-C-R- E-A-M!

It would have been easy to miss one of my favorite duos: two girls, maybe eight or nine, silently walking under stylish plastic umbrellas with streams of rain drops made of tinsel tumbling down.

The toddlers and young children, who made up much of the youth presence and typically hung with their parents, were dwarfed by the grownups, both in size, character, and attitude. 

“A Little Party Never Killed Anyone”

We have come a long way from Halloween’s origins in the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, when people would light bonfires and wear costumes to ward off ghosts, when the line between the living and dead became blurred, when the end of summer and the harvest gave way to a dark and cold winter. 

Along the way, like a snowball, Halloween has picked up cultural artifacts of the time—from the 17^th century masks of Italy’s Commedia dell’ Arte to the rainbow crinoline slip I wore trick or treating in 1950’s New Jersey to today’s inflatables.

While Ashland’s Halloween parade re-grouped for a “monster dash” through the city’s glorious Lithia Park, President Donald Trump hosted a Gatsby-inspired Halloween Party at Mar-a-Lago amid a government shutdown, celebrating the 1920’s excesses of corruption and greed. The event carried the title “A Little Party Never Killed Nobody.”

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