happy haunting

I love Halloween. It's probably my favorite holiday, in fact. I've always been the kind of person who starts cooking up next year's costume on about November 10th. My only regret about my current residence is that it's on the second floor and any potential trick-or-treaters will undoubtedly get automatically routed to downstairs.

I can already tell I'm going to love Halloween even more in Virginia. If I stick around here long enough, my someday children will never have to know the disappointment of being compelled to throw a bulky winter coat over a carefully-concocted costume due to prematurely sub-zero weather, or have to plan their costumes around fitting twelve pairs of sweatpants and eight pairs of socks underneath.

I think you can tell a lot about people by their approach to Halloween. Perhaps I overgeneralize, but I think that people who scoff at dressing up on Halloween are simply not my kind of people. For Pete's sake, we have this one socially-endorsed chance each year not to take ourselves so bloody seriously and to indulge our creativity to the fullest. So what if your moustache falls off every ten minutes? Who cares if you can't sit down all night? Dressing up in a silly costume isn't a chore, it's a privilege.

It isn't childish, either. In his essay On Three Ways of Writing for Children C.S. Lewis remarks: "To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence [...] to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development." On Halloween, the only thing more ridiculous than wearing a disguise is feeling ridiculous about wearing one. And who the hell told you that even on a good day you're not as ridiculous as the rest of us, anyway? Adolescent preoccupation with your dignity only makes you an easy target.

There does seem to be a sub-category of Halloween-haters who piss and moan about wearing a costume, but who, once in one, remain in character until they take it off. This I respect. For these people, Halloween is a commitment to this less-often-indulged aspect of their character. It takes energy and perseverance to keep it up for hours at a time.

What it comes down to is that, in some ways, Halloween is the only holiday when you don't have to pretend to be something you're not. I love my family, but I'm well aware of the entrenched roles that dictate our interactions at Christmas, Thanksgiving, etc. We're expected to behave in certain ways, speak in certain codes, and convey the best of ourselves. Halloween is about throwing down those masks and disguises and being part and parcel who we really are.

So I hope you're out there enjoying it.