Shouldn’t Halloween be cuter this year? With all the terrifying threats looming over this country, the monsters rising up from the muck with a terrible hunger for blood, the evil-doers and people-haters clawing to take control, one would think that the frivolity of Halloween would serve to balance the mood of the country and that the celebrations would offer a momentary respite from the horror. But no. No Candyland colors or happy pumpkins. Almost all of the Halloween merchandise in stores this year, from home decor to party decorations to costumes, is really scary and gory.

The guts-and-blood aesthetic emphasizes how Halloween is now largely an adult celebration. Middle-schoolers no longer have the “Are we too old to dress up and go trick-or-treating?” discussions. Their only conversations about Halloween center on how “sick” their costume is going to be and their strategies for getting maximum candy with minimum effort.

What used to be an evening of kids cutting eyeholes into bedsheets to make themselves into cute ghosts has morphed into professional people wearing expensive costumes to work. Even in conservatively dressed downtown Honolulu, there are fishnet stockings and fully painted faces among the office lunch crowd on Halloween. It’s unnerving to have the bank teller dressed as a vampire or the dentist dressed as the grim reaper or the grocery store cashier dressed as a dentist.

So in the hope of turning the tide a bit and inspiring some more gentle, charming costumes, here are some ideas solicited from local theater professionals for “easy local costumes”:

Wear white pants and a white T-shirt with a big pink spot on the front and go as a manapua.

Wear white pants and a white T-shirt with a black vest and go as a musubi.

Make arm and leg holes in a big green garbage bag and create a neck ruff with a bit of twine and go as a laulau.

Same thing with a brown garbage bag, but draw the Taro logo on the front and go as poi.

Paint a paper plate blue, decorate with blue crepe paper streamers, fasten to your head like a hat with a little elastic chin strap and go as a Portuguese man-of-war. (Don’t sting anybody, though. You’ll get arrested.)

Or just fashion a pointed hat out of a large sheet of black construction paper, cling tightly to your date and say you’re an opihi. (Again, use caution. Don’t cling to somebody you don’t know. You could get arrested. Or punched.)

Put on an ugly shirt with flamingos and toucans on it, carry a coconut shell with drink umbrellas in it, wear a Panama hat and go as the Hawaii tourists thought actually existed.

Wear a palaka shirt, dress pants, pleading smile and fuss with your hair a lot and go as Kirk Caldwell.

Slick your hair back, untuck your Reyn’s, talk like Kermit the Frog and go as David Ige.

Buy drinks for everyone at the party and go as Billy Kenoi. (Too soon? No. But too expensive.)

Cover one arm in plaster of Paris colored to look like cement and go as the unfinished rail project.

Oh, wait. Too scary.

Reach Lee Cataluna at 529-4315 or lcataluna@staradvertiser.com.