Halloween Costumes

As a practical parent, I bought my now nearly 3 year old a costume for 2012 on clearance after Halloween 2011.  When I selected a clearance costume I shied away from any "trendy" costumes - no characters in case they "went out of style" before this Halloween.  I bought an airplane costume thinking that airplanes must always be cool.

Two weeks ago people began asking my son what he was going to be for Halloween.  Instead of replying with airplane, my son said, "a witch".  At first I responded with, "No you are going to be an airplane."  My thought was that he would eventually change his mind and decide the plane costume was for him.

Needless to say, we are now just days away from Halloween and my son insists that he is going to be a witch.  So I am scurrying around attempting to find a witch costume for my boy and that is proving to be a difficult feat.

Apparently witch costumes have morphed from being a black dress, hat and broom into pink and purple tutus with flowers on the hats.  When did witches become frilly?  In my quest to find what I thought was a simple costume has turned into a baffling mystery to me.  What is a Candy Corn Witch?  A Princess Witch?  Prior to this quest the only non-scary witch I was familiar with was Glenda the Good Witch of the North from The Wizard of Oz.

I have no problem with my son dressing as a witch for Halloween.  And I understand that if he is a witch he will likely need to wear a costume that is labeled as a girls' costume.  But I do draw the line at him dressing in a tutu to be a witch.

While I was able to find a plain black witch dress that will work as his costume, I remain baffled by the difficulty in finding a traditional witch costume.  What happened to the simplicity of traditional costumes?  I cannot answer that question but I can make some predictions about future Halloweens.  I predict that at some point my son will want to be something complicated and non-traditional in the years to come.  I also predict that when his complicated non-traditional request appears, the only costumes I will be able to find will be the simple traditional costumes.  Isn't that always the way it works?