Today is Halloween, an extra special night in the Adams family. Not only is it an evening when adorable trick-or-treaters knock on the door, it’s also our youngest son’s birthday.

When he was born, I worried about Chris sharing his birthday with a major holiday and not being able to enjoy a day where he would be the star. 

Although we always had a separate party for him, it was always disappointing not to have people concentrate on just him for the day.   

I tried to put more effort on his birthday than the holiday, so elaborate Halloween costumes moved to the back burner. It was a lot easier to skate along with easy costumes 26 years ago, back before Pinterest made Halloween complicated.

When I was a kid, Halloween was a snap, especially our costume. I remember one year borrowing the bathroom plunger, covering the plunger end with a bandana and then tying the bandana in a knot. We put on one of dad’s old jackets, smeared a little dirt on our faces and we were bums.

Not only are today’s youngsters clueless about the definition of a bum, if we tried to pull off a costume like that, we’d be accused of ridiculing the homeless.

Our other go-to costumes as kids were the teacher – mom’s glasses and a notebook – the farmer – some rolled-up jeans, suspenders and a straw hat – or, if your mom was really creative, the Boris Karloff monster. That required face make up, eye shadow and Dippity Do in your hair to make it stand up.

Not today.

It’s full-fledged costume time from life-like silicone face masks to fully accessorizing the costume.

Kids need a to-the-floor Batman cape, nifty tool belt with nunchucks, the full bat mask and padded body armor. I’m surprised nobody’s packaged a plastic Halloween Batmobile to make the ensemble complete.

When it comes to hauling home all those Three Musketeers bars and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, marketers want us to buy plastic buckets specifically designed for Halloween.

No pillow cases – which worked perfectly fine back in 1963 – or a paper grocery sack which few of us have thanks to being hyper-vigilant recyclers. We might have a few markers, but I can’t see the point in going all Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel on a brown paper bag that’s going to get bumped and dragged along sidewalks.

Today’s required accessories are the $4.99 glow-in-the-dark plastic bucket, a flashlight and glow-in-the-dark strips to tape to every inch of a child’s costume, thereby negating the $49.99 you spent for them to look like Bruce Wayne.

And then we get to the granddaddy of all big-jobs, the jack-o’-lantern. We’ve gone light years beyond a toothy smile and two circles for the eyes. The creative types are building three-foot high pumpkin-and-squash extravaganzas for a dazzling front-porch Hollywood production number.

Which will rot in the Texas 80-degree autumn weather in about three hours.  

One year, the boys and I copied a jack-o’-lantern look from a magazine and got it right. It’s the one where the jack-o’-lantern appears to be throwing up all the seeds.

Yes, that was fun until ants and spiders decided a vomiting pumpkin on our front porch would make a cozy new home.  

Despite all the fun about Oct. 31, there was no choice about how to celebrate the perfect Halloween in the Adams household. All we needed was a chocolate cake, candles, ice cream and birthday presents wrapped in birthday wrapping paper.

Happy 26th birthday, Christopher Henry James Adams.

You’re the best treat we’ve ever gotten.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.