As I’ve grown older and my life has progressed, I have learned a few things about being an adult. Bills are stressful, drinking is a great pastime and holidays are for children. I’ve accepted these first two pieces of wisdom, but the third one still bothers me. Why do festivities seem so much more enjoyable and worthwhile when you are an adolescent? What is it about childhood that gives it a monopoly on annual celebrations? The exhilaration I used to feel walking down the stairs Christmas morning has been replaced with anxiety about whether I got my siblings the right gifts. My cravings for delicious and delightful Thanksgiving foods have turned into annoyed questions about whether I will have to help do the dishes. As the years pass by, it seems enthusiasm for holidays has passed with them.
This is especially the case for that spooky day right around the corner which we know as Halloween. Trick-or-treating becomes socially unacceptable and frowned upon right around puberty, and costume parties have little value other than as exercises in irony after high school. For college students, opportunities to have a good time on All Hallows’ Eve are few and far between. I say we challenge this idea. Let’s recognize Halloween as a holiday for adults.
In order to see it as such, we should first attempt to understand what makes Halloween so appealing in the first place. Why did we all get such a kick out of this day in our youth? Halloween made us happy because it was a day when we could be something we were not — or more accurately, something that we were, but were unable to express. Dressing up allowed us to see ourselves in situations and scenarios that were unimaginable on any other day. The holiday served as a means of creative expression. As adults who are constantly bombarded with the stresses and realities of life, an opportunity to escape and foster inner creativity could be therapeutic.
Halloween is the only day of the year where it is socially acceptable to indulge in our darker sides. Attraction to the macabre is something few of us will admit but that the majority of us are guilty of. “American Horror Story” and “Stranger Things” both draw in millions of viewers on a consistent basis; the master of horror Stephen King has sold over 350 million copies of books with titles like “Misery” and “Pet Sematary”; “The Conjuring 2” topped the 2016 box office and brought in over $320 million in revenue. While it is typically believed that guts, gore and dismembered body parts are cult attractions, the numbers seem to indicate that they are actually mainstream successes.
Most importantly, Halloween reminds us of a simpler time. It serves as a day where we can remember watching Disney Channel originals like “Halloweentown,” “Mom’s Got a Date with A Vampire” and “Phantom of the Megaplex.” We can reminisce the times we carved our first pumpkins or did our first Monster Mash during an elementary assembly. For one day, our mundane and monotonous lives can be flooded with memories of good candy and better company. In many ways, the fact that Halloween is so revered and celebrated by children is what gives it so much potential to bring us pleasure as adults. Nostalgia is the cheapest high; it won’t kill you or drain your bank account.
Let’s toss out the notion that it is campy or immature to get excited about dressing up or channeling your inner darkness. Let’s recognize that no matter how old we get, there is always a reason to reflect on better days and take a day to get weird. In the world we live in, it is the norm that kids look up to older generations for advice and aspiration. When it comes to rediscovering ourselves or maintaining our sanity, however, we ought to be the ones turning to kids for advice.