Halloween is by far the biggest holiday in Sedona. Residents and visitors celebrate the holiday with parties, concerts and trick-or-treating all over the city.
When Halloween falls midweek, we have only one real day to dress up and party, but when Halloween falls just after a weekend like it does this year, we can take advantage of several days of parties and events around town.
We recommend you take a look at all the Halloween-related events published in Friday’s edition of The Scene.
The highlight as always falls on Halloween proper, Monday, Oct. 31, as Uptown merchants partner with the Sedona Main Street Program to offer the annual Safe & Fun Trick-or-Treat. For 30 years, this event has annually brought more than 3,000 children and adults to walk the streets of Uptown, collecting candy from local employees as they wander from business to business through the night. Some spend hundreds of dollars on decorations and candy and we should thank them for giving our children a safe place to collect all that sugar and meet new and old friends for a night of revelry.
The zombie performance of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” choreographed by the beloved Martha Edwards and the Pink Elephant Project Fire Dancers lead by the multi-talented Juanita Bosman are always the highlights. I would strongly recommend you not leave Uptown until you have seen at least one performance by these two groups.
The best part of Safe & Fun Trick-or-Treat is seeing the thousands of children running around in costume, often with their parents in related outfits. While store-bought Princess Elsas and Captain Americas are cute, the really creative ones are what catch our attention, like the C-3PO father and his R2-D2 son, the massive cardboard Noah’s Ark carried by high schoolers dressed as animals two-by-two, Dorothy and her daughter as Toto or the female Doctor Who accompanied by her friend in a custom-made TARDIS.
Halloween allows us to dress up as the fictional heroes or villains we wish we could be, celebrities or historical figures we adore, puns we find funny and caricatures of popular culture. Some costumes only require a wig and some facepaint while others are assembled over years and cost hundreds of dollars.
Like many residents, I plan to take full advantage of a weekend of Halloween events. Channeling my inner child into the man I hope I have become, I will be dressed as a defender of peace and justice, armed with a weapon not as clumsy or random as a blaster, but an elegant weapon, for a more civilized age.
I encourage all our readers to celebrate the creativity of our community and attend an event or two, even if it is just a private house party. If you’ve never been to Uptown, I highly recommend you attend Monday and see what happens when Sedona residents put aside our formality and our egos to become carefree children again.
