For little children, it is no longer sufficient to attempt to bereminiscent of Belle from Beauty and the Beast; now you must beBelle, complete with licensed costume. The sad thing is thesecostumes are so expensive it's a good bet little Susie will be urgedto be Belle again next year, and maybe the year after that, too,because the price tag on that costume was an investment equivalentto a month's RESP contribution.

The older variation on the perfect costume seems to be theall- black costume, occasionally relieved by a face mask. I wasstruck when I visited our children's school because there were fewsplashes of colour. Like children I'd seen all over ourneighbourhood, most were gowned in sombre black with no discernibledescription other than "scary guy." There will always be those whoare drawn to said scary guy type costumes, but the uniformity of thegroup was the really scary part about this Halloween. It suggestedthat all those bought costumes in earlier years had robbed the kidsof the chance to dream and come up with their own unique version ofHalloween. A friend who's a teacher said that in her class a childwho showed up as a mummy was sneered at because his classmates,instead of admiring his creativity, laughed at his uniqueness.