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Leave the Candy for the Kids
Dalton Edwards
The holiday season kicks into high gear each year around Halloween. You’re apt to find Christmas trees strung with lights and tinsel in department stores, Black Friday ads cramming your mailbox, that one radio station already playing Bing Crosby. I’m OK with all this. Aside from the anachronistic angst I get around this time, there’s no harm done to me or anyone else when those ugly holiday sweaters are freed from their dusty storage room boxes each October. Yet, there is one thing that irks me at exactly this time every year: the nonsense appropriation of Halloween by late-teenagers and so-called adults. Halloween is a children’s holiday, and we must recognize it as such.
For one, the mass celebration of necromania is really only a deluded and unbridled exploration into the disturbances of the collective human psyche. Each year unveils terrible new horror movies, scarier haunted house attractions, gorier costumes and nightmare-inducing house decorations. Nine percent of American adults say Halloween is their favorite holiday. High portions of this group believes, seriously, in werewolves, witches (the cackling kind), vampires, and curses. In this respect, Halloween is doing little to curb the sick (and dangerous) imaginations of those who fetishize death and indulge their creepy ids by artificializing terror.
We must also consider the sexualization of Halloween. Sometime recent in American history we decided it makes sense to dress down on one of the colder nights of the year, apparently hoping to explore our more creative, visual, physical selves. I’m an advocate of healthy body-acceptance and agree with fellow-writer Emma Tanner that women (and men) should be allowed to wear what they want without being shamed or assaulted. But when we consciously mix a holiday in which adults are as free to participate in festivities as children, we’re all but ensuring the salaries of those therapists who must deal with this generation’s emotionally disturbed young ones. A national costume party is totally cool. One that has at its base the sexualization of women, however, which has led to a shift in gendered expectations of children’s Halloween costumes, is uncool. Very uncool.
The reasons Halloween is such a beneficial holiday for children are many and diverse. At the level of child development, toddlers develop the need to differentiate themselves from others as well as interact with fellow children in un-egocentric environments. Halloween is the perfect state-approved venue for hordes of children to not only interact in unique individual experiences, but also to develop an early basis for independence and self-actualization. “Trick-or-treat” is not just a request for candy; it’s a learning-opportunity – one that gives autonomy and value to the will and language of the child.
Preschoolers and young school-age children are especially apt to engage in magical thinking. Think of this as the Disneyland effect: at age seven a young boy is much more likely to believe that the life-size Goofy is the real thing. A sense of magic is inherent to Disneyland to young children in a way it isn’t to older children and adults. The same with Halloween. The opportunity to dress up and see fellow children in superhero garb is one of the most generative and beneficial qualities of this holiday. Children not only see the magic of the holiday in ways we cannot understand, but also have the chance to begin wrestling with serious questions of self-identity and expression.
As far as holidays go, Halloween is a powerhouse of intellectually and developmentally stimulating experiences for young children. Adults, in their hubris, have hijacked the holiday for their own thrill-seeking pleasure. Shitty movies are made and we’re expected to pay money to see them just because they’re “scary.” Well not any more. No more racy Halloween parties. No more offensively grotesque decorations.
Give Halloween back to the children.
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Never too Old to Celebrate
Connor Richards
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.
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