Even though the weather app on my phone currently shows 85 degrees as the high temperature, it’s safe to say we are finally beginning what I deem the “Big 4” of holidays: Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Day.
Although all have their respective charms and calorie-laden foods (looking at you, Thanksgiving), I would argue it wouldn’t be amiss to claim Halloween as the most fun holiday. Halloween is the friend that shows up to your house and makes it a party, the one that just happens to have drinks and food and likes to liven things up. There are no warm casseroles, harmonious carols or sparkling champagne glasses with Halloween. Rather, Halloween brings all the loud music, fun and partying without requiring any introspective look at one’s life.
There’s nothing wrong with having holidays centered on serious subjects. Thanksgiving and Christmas both aim to highlight the importance of family, friends and religion, while New Year’s Day tends to call attention to the self (I can’t wait to begin yet another round of failed New Year’s resolutions). This is wonderful, and it’s important to have these special days set aside for reflection and reevaluation. Halloween lacks sorely in these departments. However, what Halloween lacks in worthy human and spiritual values and traditions, it makes up for with copious amounts of sugar and terrifying costumes, which I find tends to put it in a category apart from all the other holidays where it’s free to tout its numerous charms.
People dress up in ghoulish attire or other suitably fun costumes, candy and sugar are available in abundance and magically appear on every street corner and all sorts of pumpkin-themed festivities crop up. Pumpkin carving, hayrides, pumpkin spice lattes, haunted houses, sexy pumpkin costumes…you get the drift. As far as I can tell, Halloween is one of the only holidays that — for the majority of the population — is just an excuse to go out, throw candy at strangers and consume large amounts of food and drink simply because the date happens to be Oct. 31. What a time to be alive, when there is a government mandated holiday where the sole purpose is to decorate one’s house with fake corpses and skeletons and throw Milk Duds at adorable children.
Is Halloween the most important holiday of the year? Well, that remains up for debate, but I think most people can agree the more fulfilling holidays are Christmas, Thanksgiving or New Year’s Day (sorry, Independence and Valentine’s Day lovers — these two are off the ballot). However, I have yet to find a person that doesn’t love at least one of these things: costumes, candy, friends, decorations, spooky movies and pumpkins. And if such a person actually exists, clearly they have never dressed up as a lumberjack, consumed 8,000 fun-size peanut butter Snickers and watched “Halloweentown”, twice.
People sometimes tend to forget about holiday fun with the weight of the real worldcrushing spirits left and right. People have jobs, schoolwork, tests, chores, errands and family matters to take care of. It’s very easy to turn off all the lights at your house and refuse to buy Halloween candy or to put on a costume. However, I urge you to reconsider. Halloween is a night for spooks and ghouls and needlessly gory movies where teenagers get sawed in half and where it’s socially acceptable to eat 100 pounds of candy while dressed up as Beyoncé. Can New Year’s Day boast that? I didn’t think so.
