Baby needs a Halloween costume. If I didn’t make him one myself I surely wouldn’t be any kind of costumer.
I bought three shades of silk at Joanns – green, grey, and brown – and some silk leaves in matching colors. As the title suggests, baby will be a Green Man.
I have always loved Green Men. They are delights in churches: wise, earthy, mischievous, mysterious, and unspeaking. Wikipedia lists them as being symbols of rebirth. From my reading I gathered that they were the male forest deity with the powers that implies. A male forest deity would of course, entail rebirth, but also decay and regeneration in a good way. Such as in the tarot Death card, death and decay to him would be the beginning, not the end, and in that Christianity may have translated him into a rebirth image.
Why is baby a Green Man? Because he reminds me of how a Green Man would be: mysterious, jolly, though quick to anger, destructive and creative at once. It seems to me that a baby costume should be something foreign and human (so no spiders, pumpkins, or dinosaurs) since they are mysterious indeed. A wonderful book I read regarding baby cognition remarked that a 35-year-old has way more in common with another 35 year-old than he has with himself at age 8, and certainly at age 8 months. A baby is a constant development, their minds exchanging some powers in exchange for others, limiting itself so as to form a cohesive, functioning individual. None of us can stay children, and we certainly can’t stay babies.
The trick to the Green Man costume is how to fashion it so that there is not too much going on that could either get in the face or be ingested. I am fortunate in that my little guy is not very fond of sticking things in his mouth, which both benefits his hygiene and augurs future healthy eating habits. But it would be silly to chance it.
So, make a Baby Green Man without crowding the face. I will probably do something inspired by the image here.
Such Eternal Delight 