Smiling for a reason?
Is Halloween truly considered a holiday? It is not quite a red-letter day on the calender; oftentimes (I think) it has the black lettering, but the label on the 31st still appears. Technically, we should be celebrating Hallow’s Eve, if we wanted to stick to tradition. In our modern day and time, Halloween has mutated into some strange ritual that we discover as children, and then the holiday itself takes on different meanings as we grow up.
As kids, we like Halloween - end of story. We get to dress up, parade around in costumes, and go trick-or-treating for candy. Whether or not we get to eat the majority of that candy is left to our parents to decide. But picking out a costume and getting excited for the night is exhilarating for us little kids. Then, we move to middle school. This is the stage in which we are hardly old enough to go out at 9pm at night to ring doorbells or T.P. houses, but we desperately plead our parents to let us go trick-or-treating with our friends instead of famiily. The take on costumes is a bit different also; social status in school dictates our choice of costume. Homemade costumes are less of a common sight, and we all try to outdo one another with our choices. And highschool. Halloween becomes somewhat of a nuisance. Who wants to answer the doorbell every five minutes? Do we even have time to go out with our group of 20 friends and raid houses, looking for candy? The concept of a costume has disappeared; we go trick-or-treating with or without a costume. And if we decide upon a costume, we have one of two options. We either come up with a group theme with our 20 friends, or we go all out in finding the scariest, gruesomest, most hideous costume imaginable. Nothing like a good scare to rebel against schoolwork. Halloween undergoes a 180-degree change when we get into college. We still like candy, sure, but we like parties more. Promiscuous costumes (or hardly any costume at all for the guys) and the inevitable red, plastic beer cups perpetuate themselves in the photos documenting our college Halloween parties. The occasion becomes an opportunity to let go of our hopefully hardworking student selves, and to run away with our fantasies, however crazy they may be. And here is where the road diverges. As we mature into adults, depending on our Halloween background and history, we may become those bitter people who pull close the blinds and lock the door (maybe even leave the house altogether) or we may become those people who delight at the little kids strolling down the street with a heavy pail of candy in one hand and their parents’ hands in the other. In the case of the latter, we take on the ultimate challenge of putting together a Halloween costume for our little ones, and wish upon the Great Pumpkin that they do not experience a change of heart to being a chicken.
So, I ask, what Halloween stage are you in? Has the meaning of the day changed over time? I imagine that holidays are constant. Thanksgiving smells of apples and pumpkin pies, topped with family time and well-deserved rest. Christmas never fails to bring that warm, fuzzy feeling, and the first few notes of “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” instantly conjure memories of hot chocolate, angels, and freshly-fallen snow. But what is Halloween, if it continuously changes connotations every year?
In any case, Happy Halloween, if you consider it a holiday. (Personally, I do not think it has earned that title, but I still have possess sufficient enthusiasm that I will listen to Danse Macabre tonight.)
