No, I was not dressed as Moses, although I can understand if the big shepherd’s staff would throw you. After being the devil for Halloween last year, I decided to do something different for a variety of reasons. 2 or 3 guys dress up like Jesus every year when I attend NY Comic Con. That’s right. Superman, Batman, Spiderman, and Jesus could be seen at one event. I’ve also started occasionally reading the Bible. The political positions of some Christian voters concerning refugees make even less sense after reading the book of Matthew.

You would think it would be a very simple costume to make, but it wasn’t. Since I am not a tailor, I ordered a white throbe, a piece of Middle Eastern clothing, from Amazon after searching several sites. The red cloth didn’t drape properly with my first choice of fabric. This meant buying another bit of cloth and crudely tailoring it to hang the way I wanted. And then there was the hair. A short bob of straight hair would be great if I was trying to be Ike Turner, otherwise it was going to be dreadlocks. Most of the choices were cheap looking and made to be humorous, but I finally found something appropriate. The shepherd’s staff was a broomstick with molded plastic attached to the end. I made it for symbolic reasons and because I refuse to run around in costume on Halloween in New York City without some means of defending myself. It just seemed cheesy to make a halo. The streets are too nasty and the weather too cold to wear sandals, so I chose white sneakers and pants.

Waking up early to get ready, I was a little nervous when I went out to catch the subway to work. Nervous because some people can get really touchy about religious subjects and depictions. New Yorkers can be especially vocal. The most interesting early reactions:

“Jesus Christ that’s a great outfit!”

“I always knew Jesus was Black!”

The latter quote was from a random white guy in the street. The evening was unseasonably warm when I went to the Village Halloween Parade after work. This was when I received my only bad review. While getting in line to enter the parade, I hear someone yell “Jesus”. It was a photographer. I went over thinking he wanted to take a photo. Nope. He was very offended because he believed that I was mocking Christ. How was I doing that exactly? In his mind, I was falsely representing myself as Jesus. This would make sense if I offered to heal the sick or bring the dead back to life. The conversation heated up after he made an unfortunate analogy between my outfit and him putting on blackface. Yeah, he went there. A few loud exchanges later, some concerned citizens in the crowd pulled me away from this dope. It was not my proudest moment. In a bit of irony, I spent much of the hour in line standing behind some guy dragging a 10 foot wooden cross. I wish I was joking.

The overwhelming majority of responses were positive, particularly from Black people. I was greeted with exclamations of “Black Jesus” all night. I once told someone it was just Jesus, but they insisted on using the term Black. Perhaps they needed to take ownership of biblical history at a time when famous talkshow hosts insist Christ was white, despite him being born somewhere other than Europe. The reaction was even better when I handed out candy to the crowd like I do every year. Of course I couldn’t go around scaring people like I did when portraying the devil.

I had a late night pizza bagel after the parade was over. The pizza bagel was great. The bathroom was a filthy broom closet sized hell hole with no soap and a busted toilet tank. Although it was an enjoyable evening, I was very happy to remove the warm itchy wig at the end of the night.