I can’t remember when I first thought of Halloween as one of my favorite holidays. But I’ve always celebrated Halloween, both as a little girl and a big girl too.

Can you inherit a love for a holiday? If so, I did. My mother celebrated each and every holiday – and decorated for them, too. Being a kid at heart, my father, too, liked the holidays.

The dark late-fall days with the wind blowing wildly remind me of Halloweens past as a kid. Being a talented seamstress, my mother usually made my costume. As the afternoon wore on, I’d eagerly await the time I would go trick-or-treating. After dinner my sister and I would haunt the neighborhood streets together. Back then you had nothing to fear except maybe some adult in a creepy mask greeting you at the door. And you never worried about receiving too much candy.

When we got back home, my father would drive us to two friends’ houses, the Freises’ and the Lavallees’. We would show off our costumes, and he would think it funny every year to bring his own large grocery bag and ask these friends to “fill it up.”

Grown up, I’ve celebrated Halloween by chaperoning at a high school sorority party, decorating the shipping/receiving department at Macy’s when I worked there, hosting a  Halloween party for my friends, serving a bakery cake that gave us all black tongues; and attending two memorable costume parties at Diane and John’s, one dressed in my mother’s WWII Waves uniform and the other as a princess.

Although I usually stay home for Halloween, the past two years I’ve celebrated pre-Halloween in Massachusetts. What could be more fun than going to Salem? And on a bus trip with members of the Italian Heritage Center? We revelers spent all day and early evening touring Salem and watching the costume parade. I went to the graveyard and a few museums, one featuring wax figures of the Salem witches. Since then, I’ve found out we have our very own witch in the family, Mary Estey.

Last year the day before Halloween, my friend Susan and I took a trip to the North End in Boston. We celebrated by eating pizza at Regina’s and buying dessert for later at Modern Pastry. One of the day’s highlights was seeing the statue of Paul Revere transformed into Pumpkinhead.

My kickoff day this year for Halloween was Oct. 1 at a costume party.

Place? Pequawket Lake at a camp. Dressed in original black flapper dresses and with black jeweled headbands around our foreheads, my friend and I were a hit, if I must say so. We guests played party games, ate all kinds of delicious snacks, and had a sit-down dinner inside on the porch, which was decorated with skeletons and monsters and tombstones.

Since that day, I’m counting down until Halloween. I’ve put up my Halloween postcards, my Halloween Barbie and masks on the windows.

So bring it on! Let’s celebrate Halloween.

– Special to the Telegram