Halloween and Parents on Parade

I like Halloween.  We have fun dressing up and carving pumpkins, trick or treat comes as a side note. (Even though I do love to raid the candy for chocolate). We have tons of costumes and I do enjoy making costumes for the kids that are younger.  My older kids have to choose from the boxes to see what they can figure out.  I was in charge of the Pumpkin contest at the Elementary school this week and so spent most of yesterday at the school.   It was interesting to see all of the parents showing up with their "goodies" for the parties and coming for the annual "costume" parade.  My girls got cut up apples with dip for their party.  I never have gotten in to making really fancy treats for parties.  I mean honestly, how many kids really care how fancy their cupcakes are when they have an entire plate of goodies that get smashed by the time they carry them home since they can't eat them all anyway.  It makes me wonder - do we make things like that because we like to or because we want to be the "best" parent.   The same thing with costumes.  I make them because I like to, and even then I don't do really fancy ones, but sometimes I do find myself thinking "wow, my costumes are not as cool as someone else's".   Because of the wide variety of ages of my children I have a wide variety of friends with kids of different ages.  I used to think I was weird for thinking that my kids costumes were not as good as others, but when talking to other mothers I realized that we all seem to have this idea that we have to make or buy really neat costumes for our kids.  Why??  I even had a friend question whether it was okay to reuse costumes from her older kids for her younger kids.  Has it always been this way, where parents feel like they are on parade as far as the costumes that their kids wear.  Why do we do this to ourselves?  Why don't we just have fun, and not worry about being as good as someone else.  I know this is something I struggle with, I don't overdo, but I'll admit I do criticize myself.  Why do we cause ourselves the stress of it, instead of just enjoying Halloween.  Just wondering.