Senior history major
Well, it looks like Halloween was almost canceled on the East Coast this year — and I, for one, am ecstatic.
There is no shallower, cheaper, more rotten holiday than the one we thankfully did not have to endure for the last two years. Here’s hoping that trend lasts indefinitely.
I do not know the origins of Halloween, but then again, no one else on this planet does. Hundreds of years ago, Celts in England spent “All Hallows’ Eve” honoring the dead and celebrating a bountiful harvest. If we take “honoring the dead” as “watching the ABC Family horror movie marathon,” and “celebrating a bountiful harvest” as “stuffing our mouths with Laffy Taffys until our teeth turn a distinct shade of yellow and proceed to fall out,” then I am certain 21st-century revelers have successfully maintained the historical significance of the holiday.
For small kids, I get the appeal of Halloween. Like Jerry Seinfeld says, all we cared about as children was “Get candy, get candy,” and it’s hard to think of another time and place than the night of October 31 on Mrs. McGrady’s porch where this dream could have been more easily realized. But with all the recent emphasis on eating healthy, I hope and expect to see this tradition changed soon. In 20 years, when puny Draculas and Supermans come knocking on my door, they will be asked to recite, “trick or package of granola!” and should be expecting the latter.
Halloween is also a very scary holiday. For someone who was afraid of the dark until senior year of high school, I tend to stand clear of the haunted houses, horror movies and frighteningly carved pumpkins that define Halloween for so many people. I will never understand why most of my friends enjoy watching ancient spirits wreak havoc on a white, middle-class family with a beautiful daughter until they can’t sleep for days, but I can’t even handle the previews. Scary things don’t entertain me, they just … scare me. Thankfully, I just received my parents’ package containing my blankie and a second night light for the bathroom, so sleep should come easier than in past years.
While I give Halloween and its delights of dread a pass for small children, it has become an absolute joke on college campuses, including this one. The weeks leading up to the holiday (if you can call it that) are filled with incessant chatter about potential costumes. Since when did Halloween become a monthlong holiday where we each need 34 costumes? Asking most girls, “What are you being for Halloween?” is equivalent to asking them to name every species in the animal kingdom, and I just don’t have time for that.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that severe weather has interrupted Halloween for the past two years. What we’re doing is just not right. Halloween should begin and end in elementary school. Halloween, especially at college, is a grotesque perversion of a holiday that, at its heart, is a grotesque perversion. College students should accept that and move on to better things, like getting drunk while wearing more than one article of clothing. Let’s keep it that way.
Neal Freyman is a senior history major. He can be reached at opinionumdbk@gmail.com.
