Tomorrow is Halloween and I don’t want to participate. Boo-hoo!

Evidently the etiquette for not participating involves, turning your lights off, not answering your doorbell and leaving a note of explanation in the bowl filled with all the candy, encouraging the trick-or-treaters to help themselves.

Last year was my first Halloween home. I decided to be part of the community. My neighbors are friendly and were in the spirit. As I remember last year was an all-evening event. The toddlers started before dark then as it got darker the older children started coming. The little ones were with their parents.

Most of the children seemed to be scared of me. They don’t know me and I don’t know them. I am rarely home when they would be outside, so they rarely see me around.

I just don’t feel like doing it again this year.

What do you call someone who doesn’t participate in Halloween?

Perhaps it’s “party-pooper.” I am certain that there must be a word that aptly describes my reluctance. At Christmas time, someone who doesn’t participate is a Scrooge, for Ebeneezer Scrooge, the old grouch who made his employees work on Christmas Day.

He even had words to describe how he felt, “Bah, humbug.”

Last year I bought a lot of candy, which in the past, I have ended up eating most of myself. But not last year. It was all gone.

This year, I bought even more candy. I have a “costume;”  one that I wore while we were exploring Alice in Wonderland last summer. It is supposed to be a mad-hatter.

But I just don’t feel like it.

Maybe I am feeling the effect of a hobgoblin. A hobgoblin is defined as a mischievous spirit as opposed to a malicious one.

Ralph Waldo Emerson immortalized the term hobgoblin when he wrote: “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”

So maybe this is a hobgoblin come to remind me that I have a choice in this matter.

I have a plethora of choices.

I can choose to drag my feet and go kicking and screaming into the festivities.

Or I could choose to put my candy in a big bowl with a note to help themselves.

I could keep busy and warm by picking the best costume and giving a prize. (I could start with candy!)

I could choose to get to know the children in my cul-de-sac.

I could make up my mind to have a great Halloween and be open and receptive to all sorts of good things occurring.

But Emerson didn’t say that “consistency” was the hobgoblin of little minds but rather he said “a foolish consistency”

A foolish consistency would include activities that you would rather not be involved in, but because of societal pressures, you succumbed and did them anyway.

In Science of Mind teaching, we practice being critical thinkers. People who know their own minds and make wise choices for themselves are practicing critical thinking. People who evaluate heir choices and make the wisest.

Do you love Halloween? Do you get into the Spirit of it? Or do you invite the hobgoblin to set you free on a new path for yourself?

I am not into Halloween this year. Woo-hoo!!  Am I the only one?