Most of the world might say that their favorite holiday is Christmas. Many Americans would say Thanksgiving, but if you ask me? My favorite holiday is Halloween. There is just something about having the chance of being scared and spooked out of your mind for an entire month that is so appealing that I look forward to it every year.
First of all, Halloween happens in the fall, which is arguably the best season. The air is colder, you finally get to bust out your fluffy socks and warm sweaters, the leaves are starting to turn beautiful hues of yellow and orange, and most importantly, the nights become longer. With long nights comes time for more spooky happenings.
Secondly, there’s the candy of course. Who doesn’t love going around to houses of random people that you don’t know, holding out a bag, and just expecting candy to be dropped into it? Honestly, what’s stopping them from just spraying you with silly string or pouring paint on you when you say “trick or treat” instead of giving you sweets? I guess we just take it as it comes and hope for a full-size Snickers instead of a full prank.
On top of the chills and the candy, there is nothing better about spooky season than the movies that come with it. With the plethora of scary movies out there, there is sure to be something for everyone. You can appreciate the ones that are supposedly kid-friendly, like “Coraline,” “Monster House,” or “Corpse Bride,” or you can go for some Halloween classics like, “Scream” or “Halloween.” But if you’re anything like me, you’ll want to go for the scariest and goriest movies that you can find to really get into the spooky spirit, such as, “It,” “The Craft,” “Insidious,” or even “Terrifier” for a good slasher film. I don’t know what it is about the Halloween season, but for some reason, horror movies are more scary now than any other time of the year.
If you really want to be scared, you could take it one step further and go to a haunted house. Maybe some people don’t like to be scared out of their minds, looking over their shoulders constantly, and ending up too scared to sleep that night, but that is definitely not me. When it comes to haunted houses, the scarier the better. Haunted houses give you an experience that you can’t get watching a movie — they give you a chance to feel like you are being hunted or chased without actually being in any danger of course.
It is important to address the difference between Halloween as a kid and Halloween as an adult. As a kid, it’s one night a year that you get to stay out past your bedtime, dress up as your favorite superhero or princess and eat all the candy that your little heart desires. I guess as an adult, the magic is kind of taken out of it when, theoretically, you can do that any day of the week.
So as adults, I say we should take Halloween as a night to not be ourselves. We can dress however we want, with no judgment and no retribution. When you’re an adult, stuck in the person that we’ve made for ourselves and must stick to constantly, there is nothing more freeing than not having to care about that for one night a year.
Halloween is unlike any other time of year and I say that we all should take advantage of this time to go out and enjoy it.
Photo: Sam Ross/ The Johnsonian
