When I was a kid, I remember Halloween being pretty much just Halloween night. Nowadays, Halloween lasts all month. The great thing about Halloween though is that you really can’t mess it up. There’s no pretense to Halloween. It’s a guiltless holiday. You don’t have to worry that maybe it’s getting “too commercial” or that somehow it’s begun to “lose it’s true meaning.” The meaning of Halloween is plain and simple: it’s dressing up in costumes and getting candy. It doesn’t matter how many weekends they add to Halloween, at its core, it is still costumes and candy and no one really cares if you happen to go overboard with the costumes and the candy. You can do costumes and candy at the zoo, at the Botanical garden, at the Children’s Museum, at the mall, at a party, at someone else’s subdivision–you can do as much Halloween as you can fit into October. And no grown-up is going to get all Thanksgiving on you and tell you that this holiday is all about family and being thankful or interrupt you as you begin page three of your Christmas list to make sure you remember the true meaning of the season. Listen, kids, you trick-or-treat as much as you wanna; there’ll be plenty of holidays with substance later.
These photos were taken the weekend before Halloween at the Atlanta Botanical Garden. Kids could wear costumes, decorate a pumpkin, ride in a train–good Halloween fun.
For more photos of Goblins in the Garden, check out the SmugMug Gallery.