From the time our children were small up until Bar/Bas Mitzvah age or so, we made it a point to develop Yiddishe themes for the family’s Purim costumes, where each of us had an essential (‘costume’) role. We felt that while there’s nothing wrong with a child dressing up as say, Batman or as some other secular figure (e.g., a baseball player), Purim created an opportunity to have fun specifically in a Jewish way. Weeks and weeks in advance of Purim each year, we set to work on something Torah-dig that called for the participation of everyone in our family of four (i.e., we the parents, and our boy and girl twins). On the local scene we were applauded for our mostly successful efforts each time. One year we were a succah -- a walking one! When we would arrive at a house to deliver shalach monos, we’d poise ourselves in front of the house and do our ‘assembly’ thing. On that occasion, each of us had a custom-fitted cardboard succah ‘wall’ strapped to his/her back. As we drew close into ‘succah formation’ (forming a square), we placed a look-alike schach piece of cardboard on top, and there we were! Another year we were a walking and twirling dreidel. Again with custom fitted cardboard panels on our backs (for each of the dreidel’s four sides), and a contraption for the dreidel top through which we pushed a cardboard tube (the handle to twirl the dreidel), we assembled ourselves inside the homes we visited. It was a bit clumsy, but well worth it all to see the smiles that our extravaganza elicited. Another Purim, we marched in a straight row through the local streets, each of us bearing two tall mock candles symmetrically arranged on a horizontal bar -- to make eight in all -- to form a menorah; it’s amazing where a little ingenuity and some silver paint-sprayed PVC pipe can get you. We’re not ashamed to say that one year our family costume more or less flopped. We meant to be the daled minim. Mother and daughter carried large, floor-length bright yellow esrog shaped panels with holes cut out to look through, while father and son carried a bundle of well-intended replicas of the other three minim. The let-down came when walking along Menlo Drive on Purim Day, when a driver dressed up as a clown motioned to me (Mr. T.) to come over to him. He said: “I know what you are. You’re as asparagus, no?”
