Halloween is one of my favorite holidays, personally (besides Christmas and my birthday, which I do consider to be a holiday...). I just always loved the idea of getting dressed up as a character or something that you're not normally and portraying that role for a night. We all want the opportunity to be a princess for a day or to pretend we grew up in a different era and dress in those styles. However, things change from when you participate in Halloween as a kid as opposed to being a college student.
As a kid, it was so unbelievably simple. Your parents took you to a costume store, whether it be Spirit Halloween or Halloween City. The costumes were already all pre-packaged with everything you needed inside a nice little bag for you. There was no need to spend tons of money on extra accessories because most of them came with your costume itself. You would look around the store for about 10 minutes and try on about 3 costumes and BAM! You would find the one that is perfect. You knew it would totally impress all the other girls in your class when you wore it to school on Halloween and you felt amazing in it and that is truly all that mattered.
So Halloween day would come. You would pack up your costume in your bag to take it to school with you for the big Halloween parade that would happen later in the day. Until then, you would wear your cute Halloween shirt that your mom bought you that says "BOO!" on it in big letters that glowed in the dark with the matching earrings. The few ambitious kids would go so far as wearing a witch's hat to really give the outfit that extra kick. Later in the day, you would change into your costume for the grand reveal. Then, of course, you would parade around the school as if you were a Victoria's Secret model walking the runway.
But the real fun and exciting stuff happened at night. When you got home from school, it was already time to start getting fully ready for the night you had ahead of you. Not only was the costume necessary but so were all of the props and makeup that went along with it; because now, it was really showtime. You put on everything you needed to really look the part of whatever it was you were pretending to be, grabbed your candy bag, and ran out the door. When you were really young, you would hold your parent's hand and walk up and down your street going door to door in search of candy. But once you got a little older, you would meet up with some friends and trick-or-treat together. Once you made it to all of the houses that you physically could in one night, you head back to your house to examine the treasures of the evening. You dumped out your candy bag and began eating all of your favorite things. The next morning you would wake up, still partially on a sugar high, and go to school again like normal.
It really is quite funny how much things change over the years though. Once you hit college-age, Halloween has a whole new meaning. It turns into a reason for girls to really dress however they want for a night and not get judged for it (at least not too much). To find a costume, you search on the internet or Pinterest for ideas starting in September. It's no longer the "cool thing" to just buy a pre-packaged costume and call it a day. Now, you have to put all of the pieces together to create some kind of costume. So you search until you find something that you think will be acceptable. Then begins the search for finding all of the necessary pieces of the costume. You search the internet, the mall, and every other shopping location fathomable. Eventually, you have everything and you're ready to show it off.
Halloween is no longer a single day, it has been turned into an entire weekend that has been given the name "Halloweekend". This basically just gives college students more time to go out and party and more days to dress up so they could choose multiple costumes (because one is always too hard to decide on). So Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday (for the extremely ambitious) will be filled with Halloweekend festivities. Needless to say, college Halloween parties aren't like your elementary school Halloween parties where you bobbed for apples and carved pumpkins.
After the weekend's unspeakable events, most people will take Sunday as their recovery day to get themselves back together for classes the next morning. In the case of this year, Halloween being on a Monday, it just feels like any other ordinary day at school. Exams and quizzes will still be given, professors will still show up for class, and homework and papers are still expected to be done. Nothing stops college from being, well, college. Unlike in elementary school, its generally frowned upon to walk around your college campus in whatever costume you have chosen. So instead, on Halloween, you wear some kind of generic Halloween graphic tee or sometimes just normal clothes and go on with your day.
For myself, a firm believer of being a child at heart, I still enjoy partaking in every Halloween activity there is. I still make the annual trip to the pumpkin patch to pick out the perfectly round pumpkin and get lost in the corn maze. I still insist on dressing up. And I still go out trick-or-treating with my little sister. Although the dynamics of Halloween may change as you get older, it doesn't mean you can't take part in the traditions of the holiday. So I encourage everyone, no matter your age, to carve a pumpkin and eat candy until you're bouncing off the walls this year. Happy Halloween!
