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Eco-interested parents find Halloween scarier than their conventional counterparts do. This is fact. How can we not? Our email inboxes are bombarded daily with solid information on genetically modified beet sugar in conventional candy, and the horrible hormone disrupting and potentially cancer causing chemicals plus lead, a neurotoxin, in the paint and makeup our tots are eagerly smearing all over their gorgeous faces (thanks, Campaign for Safe Cosmetics and thanks, Environmental Working Group).
I've literally been getting one horror show warning after another via Facebook, Twitter, and email as the week leads up to the big flaming orange pumpkin of a day. Didn't know that cute costume or mask you spent good money on might contain the poison plastic PVC? This is why green leaning blogs have been laying on the DIY safe face paint and costumes posts super thick -- I'm talking cornstarch and water thick -- this week. Well, that and who needs more witch hat landfill fodder.
It almost makes you long for the days when the only thing parents were scared of was easy to avoid needles, pins, and razor blades in apples. Kidding! But it does make you long for the days when you dressed your candy-ignorant baby up as a home-fashioned ladybug (organic pesticide...) and carried her in the local kids' parade.
Which is why I was delighted to hear that amid all of the toxic, frightful, genetically modified sugar coated festivals going on in my town this weekend, there will be the first ever NYC Green Halloween Festival. And it sounds pretty good to my eco-mommy ears. It's part festival, part school/community initiative. Emphasis will be on performances (a green clown posse, and a Michael Jackson "thriller-off") and art (including a "spooky skulpture garden" made from recycled materials), rather than treats. Though there will of course be treats, it's Halloween after all. And -- crucial reminder people -- green parenting doesn't (automatically) mean overbearing parenting or a childhood-devoid-of-anything-yummy. The Green Festival's treats will be decidedly unscary organic (or at least pretty natural) items handed out by Revolution Foods, Lararbar, Cascadian Farms, Pirate's Booty and Wonderful Pistachios, among others. All of which will seem pretty exotic and exciting to one almost 4-year-old girl I happen to know extremely well. She'll be a ghost (old pillowcase, with too hastily-cut holes), in case you were wondering. A scary one.
So if you happen to be in New York on Saturday, October 31st from 12 to 5 p.m., stop by the main gate of the DeSalvio Playground at Spring and Mulberry Streets in Nolita. If you don't live in New York, check to see if your town is hosting a green Halloween event; Green Halloween affiliates are hosting events in other cities from Seattle to Tampa.
If not, host your own. Start by getting some Fair Trade organic chocolate, then invite your kids' friends and embrace the madness.
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