Last year, two days before Halloween, as I approached my front door, I was surprised to be greeted by a carved pumpkin, spewing seeds and pulp from its jaggedly cut jaw.

My downstairs neighbors, a family with two youngish teen daughters fessed up to creating the holiday gourd greeter, telling me that it was their tradition to carve a BARF-O-LANTERN every Halloween.

I smiled inside and out.  I loved the humor, the idea that it was a father daughter tradition, that it was a display of creativity.

I guess Halloween is not just about candy any more.  It’s not just for kids.  It’s not just about dress-up, about copping a persona that’s creepy or camp.

It’s big business and small gatherings. I love the juxtaposition between cultural phenomena and home-made fun.

I live in a nice neighborhood where the abundance of yellow crime scene tape, fortunately, is not usually put up by Police District #17 to maintain artifacts in an undisturbed state for an investigation.

By the last week in October, crime scene tape and RIP gravestone markers and spools of white spider web material have long been sold out at local Target and K-mart stores.

Homeowners rake their front yards and install temporary cemeteries, bat caves, and giant tarantula nests populated with Freddy Krueger clones, not so friendly ghosts, and dangerous dolls wearing Victorian pinafores and glassy expressions, begging for an exorcism.

Decorating the front yard is just the beginning, of course.  Halloween is a great excuse for grown-ups to get a little crazy with costumes.

There are always the classics available from any costume store: witches, black cats, French maids, skeletons, vampires, and clowns.

There’s in-the-news costumes inspired by the likes of Meghan and Harry, the Donald, and the Zika virus.

And there are costumes that are not quite original but can be put together from things most families can find in a closet or basement and can capture an unique rendering like baseball players, nerds with high-waisted khakis and pocket protectors, and hippies (yes, Boomers really wore jean skirts and wire-rimmed glasses).

And then there’s never saw that one coming inventions.

One year, for Halloween, I turned myself into a Chia Pet, that funny plant and planter combo that grows almost at will. I fashioned a very simple tunic out of Astro-turf like material, looping green yarn through it in spots to reflect where seeds had started to sprout.

Just a few years ago, I went to a party as artist Frida Kahlo.  Wearing a colorful Mexican smock, with plastic flowers in my hair, toy monkey hanging loosely from my neck (she actually had a pet monkey), and heavily penciled uni-brow, another party reveler kept staring at me, trying to name the famous person I was impersonating.

Late in the evening, with a sense of pride, she screamed at me in recognition, ”Salma Hayek.”

I had to laugh.  “No,” I said, “But she played me in the movie.”

I always felt good —I thrived—when I felt I exercised my creativity.

• I rarely, almost never, get bored.
• I often surprise people. (That’s a ton o’ fun!)
• I can lean on my creativity when I don’t have money. I did this a lot throughout my life!

Last weekend, a friend and I went to the Chicago Botanical Gardens for their Night of 1000 Jack-O’-Lanterns event.  A new experience for me.

An amazing number of carved pumpkins were on display.  Some were carved through to cleaned out and candle-lit cores.  Other pumpkins featured incredibly intricate designs, where different depths of orange pumpkin flesh were chiseled out and then animated by candles or tea light from inside.

I wandered through the garden with a happy and awed expression frozen on my face like a jack-o-lantern on Prozac.

It hit me that I love Halloween. Yes, I was touched by the movie, Coco, and I understand the significance of All Saints Day, but for me, the holiday is about celebrating creativity.

I’m very thankful that it’s an important part of my life. It’s not just something possessed by Taylor Swift or Jeff Bezos. We all can exercise our creativity. I’m very happy when my friends and neighbors share theirs with me.

Celebrating what is scary creative is no small thing.