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It’s uncanny. It’s halloween and it’s not raining. And for the first time that I can remember, as the dust is settling from the onslaught of ghosts, ax-murderers, princesses, and gestalt animals, I realize I have had a great evening.

Usually greed and gluttony are poorly disguised in the sporadic stream of teenagers wearing street cloths and masks bought only hours earlier, each carrying a gargantuan shopping bag to carry their loot. Some years I’ve even retreated to the basement or a back room, shutting the door, closing the curtains, and turning out the lights throughout the rest of the house until the evening hours — and the trick-or-treaters — have passed.

This year, though, perhaps because I now have a son of my own and have started catching glimpses of the world through the eyes of a toddler again, I notice all the younger kids for whom this is a new experience — a few showing off in costumes they’ve been planning for weeks, some others almost too shy to come to the door, others simply overwhelmed and bewildered by the strangeness of it all. Yes, most of them do look into their bag to see what drops in, but it seems to be more in curiousity than in greed.

One boy in the largest group doesn’t even look in his bag at all. He cranes his head to peer past his fellow monsters and through the door at my son’s toys, still spread out across the floor in disarray. He lingers at the door, his candy bag all but forgotten in his hand, as the group begins to head back down the sidewalk. Finally, he drags himself away with a quick glance up at me as if to say, “this whole candy thing is fine, but what I really want is to get my hands on those TRUCKS!”

Apparently the Holiday Season^TM has arrived. With the return of rain here on the San Francisco peninsula, the holiday catalogues have started showering our mailbox. Today it was L.L. Bean…a split-rail fence bordering a snow-covered field…steaming tin mugs of hot chocolate….

I miss winters in Wisconsin and Minnesota, where the seasonal rhythms provide a steady cadence difficult to hear above the roar of American consumerism. Perpetual variations on eternal themes.