In some capacity, most of the widely recognized holidays hold a special place in my heart. New Year’s Eve has a cute Charlie Brown special and staying up until midnight was always fun to me as a child. Valentine’s Day was just an excuse to get free candy at school. But the holidays that hold the most of my heart are Christmas and Halloween. And as Halloween is only a few days away, I’ve started reflecting on what exactly it means to me. So I present to you, my thoughts on Halloween!
Halloween (to me) will always be the estranged cousin to the rest of the holidays.
Every holiday has a few key things in common:
1) Each has at least a few or more movies, songs, or television specials centered around them.
2) Corporate greed has distanced them so far away from their original meaning that they’re now all about buying things (decorations, outfits, gifts for others).
3) Most of them have happy, celebratory connotations.
Halloween is a little different. It originated from the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, where people would light bonfires and wear costumes to ward off ghosts. It has plenty of movies, songs, and of course the tradition of Trick-Or-Treating in costume. Halloween will always have some element of childishness link to it for me, but it will always have a darker, more supernatural feel to it than other holidays. Unlike other holidays, fictional monsters, terrifying horror movies, and haunted house (mazes, hayrides, etc.) will always make Halloween stand out.
As I’ve grown older, I’ve grown to like Halloween a lot more than the other holidays. The mature and supernatural aspects of the season have always interested me, even though I’ve not always partaken in them.
I’ve never been a fan of horror movies. I’d never even watched one all the way through until last year. But for this Halloween season, I’ve watched more in the past month than I have in my entire lifetime. I don’t think I’ve gone and fallen in love with them yet, but I’m having fun exploring the genre.
As far as haunted houses (mazes, hayrides, etc.) go, I’ve only ever been to one good one, and that was just last weekend. Before then, the only one I’d ever been to relyed so heavily on strobe lights that you couldn’t even see how bad the jumpscares were. Last weekend I visited The 13th Gate in Baton Rouge, one of the nation’s best haunted houses (supposedly). I waited for 3 hours JUST TO GET IN LINE and then journeied through a house full of bloody people, clowns, and one gigantic rat that I did not care for. It wasn’t worth the three hours, but the set, animatronics, and actors were so entertaining and incredibly well put together that I still had fun!
These however have not been the main reasons I’ve grown to love Halloween.
I love it because of the atmosphere it creates. I love wearing a costume that other people think I may be too old to wear but that I think I look really cool it. I love hearing about ghosts and witchcraft even when I don’t really subscribe to those beliefs. Halloween is just a time to be weird and enjoy the fall weather, which are already too of my favorite pastimes. It just has something for everyone, especially people like me who appericated a creepy/fall vibe.
So in conclusion, Halloween is the superior holiday. And I hope whoever is reading this has a happy one!
I really enjoyed this piece! My dad hates halloween (I think it’s because we live in the middle of nowhere and his parents didn’t celebrate it. prob.) , so I have never had a good Halloween. Everytime I tell my dad that I want to celebrate Halloween, he just scoffs and says, “Whatever. You do you.” But I can feel his disagreement. As I’ve never actually celebrated Halloween. And something bad always happens to me on Halloween, so that always effects my plans for the holiday. That’s why I’m grateful for this post. I’ve always wondered what it was like to celebrate Halloween and now I know. So, thanks!
I also really enjoy Halloween for it’s uniqueness. It is very fun. You did use the wrong form of two, and to in the last paragraph, just for reference. 🙂