I've hated Halloween for as long as I can remember -- ever since my friend Rebecca decided we should dress up as two parts of a horse one year and I got stuck with being the back end.

Adding to my disinclination for this festival of all things sweet and scary were news reports that surfaced during the height of my Halloween years about razor blades buried in apples and candy laced with hallucinogenic drugs. Stuff like that really took the treat out of trick-or-treating.

But there was something even more persuasive than these humiliations to keep me from enjoying this orgy for the mouth and parade for the eyes that most kids love. It took me years to see it, but now that I am a parent, I realize that my own parents never had a taste for the holiday.

Ours was the barest house on the block, decoration-wise. No orange and black spiders dangled from our door. My costumes were either commercial, flammable and store-bought or some odd assortment drawn from a motley collection of dress-up clothes (except for the one hand-made horse costume that my friend and I constructed). My folks never went door-to-door with us -- they'd arrange it so that we would travel with a group of kids led by some willing parent.

No need to bring out the violins -- I've forgiven them. It's just that after my kids were born I concluded that since (a) I wasn't much of a Halloween mom, and (b) my husband wasn't much of a fan either, there was a probability that we'd pass this peculiar family heirloom down to our kids. And I wasn't so sure that it was fair to them.

I put the Halloween issue off as long as possible after my first child was born. But when she was three years old, there was an unexpected intervention.

Who knew that there was a member of our family who was metamorphosing into a pattern-sewing, costume-wearing, house-decorating, more-than-just-candy-providing, trick-or-treating champion of Halloween? By the fall of my daughter's third year, my mother-in-law's transformation was complete. She emerged as a production manager for this annual event, a quintessential hostess of Halloween.

She knew what she was up against and set out to change the face of this holiday. By August, she had screened costume ideas and was on the hunt for patterns at sewing stores.

The costumes were fitted and hand-sewn by the end of September. Over the years these have included such creations as an orange and black clown suit with tall black felt hat studded with orange yarn balls; an over-the-shoulder green-felt M&M suit (and a red one for the mother); an exotic belly dancer/fairy princess (custom designed based on my daughter's indecision); a witch with long black fingernails and 16-inch pointed hat, and Halloween-patterned vests to wear with black bowlers fitted with yellow plastic daises.

That was "Costume Prep". Then there was "Choreography". She'd take the day off work, dress up in her Raggedy Ann costume complete with red yarn wig and stripped tights or a wicked witch costume with black nails and green teeth. She'd go to one school with one granddaughter, look critically at costumes on parade, applaud the well-made ones and critique the ill-constructed ones, provide Halloween candy and decorated pencils to the kids and then travel to the other grandchild's school and do it all over again. She gained quite a reputation in educational circles.

Third was the "Runway Walk". This meant a trip to a local indoor mall to allow my children to strut their stuff and fill their bags with treats without threat of bad weather.

Last was the climax of the day: the "Meet and Greet" portion of Halloween. My kids and grandma tricked and treated through the neighborhood while I positioned myself by the door trying to convince myself that providing sweets to the neighborhood children once a year was an OK thing to do.

My children were delivered back rather late, completely exhausted but happy. My mother-in-law, on the other hand, would be beyond energized. The Halloween high would last her for weeks afterward.

When my parents-in-law announced they were retiring and moving out of town several years ago, I wondered what would become of Halloween. But of all the things to potentially fear on Halloween, this was not one of them. The holiday had imprinted on this family. I don't take a whole day off as she did or hand out candy at school, but I get to the costume parades in the classrooms, have even been known to dress up for the day, and I take a whole roll of photos to the one-hour processing service at my local drugstore.

I still hate Halloween -- I don't care to have all that processed candy in the house, don't like the ramifications of a late night out on school nights, and what some of the costumes I see represent about our society.

But these feelings are back burner to what my kids get out of it. For them, it is a meaningful event. An entire day devoted to the joys of being a kid. I try to think of it as an ode to Grandma Joyce. Her love of this holiday showed me that with a little desire, persistence and creativity, a loving someone can step in and breathe new life into a family ritual. For saving Halloween in our family, I say, "Thanks, Joyce."

(c) 2000, Ellen Blum Barish. Distributed by Los Angeles Times Syndicate