Break out the skeletons and candy, folks, because the best holiday of the year is here.
As the weather turns crisp and pumpkins fill the neighborhoods, around every corner are the best of frights — ghouls, ghosts and children with sugar fever. Candy corn sales are up, caramel apples are back in fashion and cider is the new lemonade.
I think Halloween is the most exciting holiday of every year, and not just because of the candy. Halloween is a holiday that encourages us to reach into the furthest fringes of our imagination and put it out there on display. Everything from pumpkin carving to costuming to watching scary movies is part of this exercise in creativity.
During Halloween we seek relief in the frightful, letting our imaginations run outside their usual boundaries. We don masks and step into new identities with our friends to be someone — or something — else, and in doing so we express parts of ourselves that are often tucked away during the rest of the year.
Some see Halloween as a shameless cash grab hyped up and marketed by companies to sell Hershey bars and movie tickets, but this sort of cynicism only cuts so deep.
We have a tendency to market all of our holidays to the extreme. Halloween is not exempt from this trend, but our excess decorations and creepy lawn ornaments still cultivate an atmosphere of festivity.
Besides, it’s rubbish to claim that we only open our wallets for Twizzlers and Twix bars on Halloween. The holiday has become a fairly successful time for charities and fundraisers across the country. UNICEF’s Trick or Treat campaign has raised over $175 million worth of aid for at-risk children since 1950, and the Spirit of Children Foundation has donated around $37 million to hospital care in the past ten years.
Halloween also has a special way of bringing a community together on a small scale too. For children, it’s getting to know their neighbors and peers while they’re out trick-or-treating. For parents, it’s chaperoning their kids or handing out candy at the door to the local undead.
For those of us in college, it tends to be a mix of crazy Halloween parties with absurd costumes and even stranger people — not to mention the hayrides and haunted houses.
At the end of the day, Halloween gives us an excuse to be whoever, or whatever, we want while we seek out scares, sweets or just a good piece of pumpkin pie.
