Greetings on All Saint’s Day, a holiday that, for most of us, only heralds a day we wish we could stay in bed with a stomachache.
Actually, I always feel depressed on Nov. 1. I realize that I have bought too much candy to ever consume. The costume I worked on so hard has gone from spectacular the night before to tacky the morning after. I turn on the television, and instead of wonderful scary movie marathons, I’m greeted with Christmas commercials.
Now, some people believe that Christmas is the best holiday of the year. Some are advocates of Thanksgiving or Easter. Still, some cite the importance of drunkenness and debauchery to ring in the New Year.
I, on the other hand, know the truth. In every way, Halloween is the best holiday of the year, and I will fight anyone who says differently.
Food
For both Thanksgiving and Christmas, the food preparation is horrendous. Not only do we have to learn the proper way to cook a turkey and make dressing, two of the hardest dishes to make well, we also have to attend one to possibly 10 huge meals for each holiday.
For Halloween, all we have to do is buy and collect candy. This is when all the stores create another candy aisle and stock it with assortment packs and candy corn. Do we feel guilty eating 10 or 20 bite-sized Snickers in a row? No! They’re bite-sized. Sure, a person can argue that Easter has its share of yummy candy, but it also includes the dying of eggs, a messy damper to a good tradition of eating candy.
And if we are children or have them, we don’t even have to buy the candy. We can just go trick-or-treating, the best tradition ever invented. Imagine, we can go to people’s houses and receive free candy. The person who thought that up should be made into a saint.
Traditions
Along with trick-or-treating, Halloween has some of the best traditions ever. Last week I carved my first jack-o-lantern. How fun is that?! If you’ve never made artwork in a huge orange gourd, I suggest you try it.
Sure, on some holidays we dress as Santa Clauses, turkeys, Easter Bunnies or simply in Christmas sweaters with reindeer ears. But Halloween is the season for dress-up. If you’re wearing pointy ears, you’re not some lame elf. You’re a vampire! You can dress up as just about anything, including costumes that it takes a full five minutes to explain, and no one will say “boo” about it. (And yes, ’tis the season of bad puns.)
Also, rolling yards has become a truly Southern tradition around here, especially for teenagers who have nothing else to do. As soon as Oct. 1 rolls around, thousands of yards sport sanitary paper products for the entire month. Just take a few rolls of generic toilet paper, and instant fun!
And, of course, there are haunted houses, costume parties, ghost stories, hay rides, campfires … you name it. Just remember this: this is the one holiday where we don’t have to plan around nine family get-togethers.
Television
Forget the endless renditions of “A Christmas Carol” and sappy stories of family togetherness. Monster movie marathons are where it’s at. For the entire week of Halloween, I was glued to the television set to catch all the marathons of Freddy Krueger, Michael Myers, Jason and all the bad vampire movies. Promiscuous teens slashed to pieces and the courageous girl (or psychotic Corey Feldman) saving the day? It doesn’t get any better than that.
Yes, I’m a bit depressed as I sit around eating my woefully depleting stash of peanut butter cups and turn to AMC only to find a Fred Astair movie.
Of course, now I can start the scariest tradition of the year: Christmas shopping.