As soon as the fall air starts cooling and orange leaves begin to fall off trees, you'll find me curled up in bed watching horror movies and wearing leggings with ghosts, black cats, or spider webs on them. My apartment is covered in orange and black decorations that will stay up long past the first round of Christmas carols that begin playing on the radio. Halloween is by far the most superior holiday.
Let me begin by saying this: I am not a holiday person. Why, you ask?
On Thanksgiving, we pretend to be grateful for everything going on in our lives, when the very next day we trample each other in the mall over some sales. That doesn't sound like content and grateful people to me. On Christmas eve, we flock to our parents' churches, participating in services that we don't believe in to appease relatives that we don't even want to see.
The Christmas celebration lasts for the entire month as people host one "family reunion" after the next acting as though it's been years since the kids came to town, even though they were just there over Thanksgiving.
I, for one, would much rather be laying on the beach than sucking up to distant relatives that I don't even like. These two holidays that are supposed to "bring out the best in people" just turn everyone into phony suck-ups who are afraid to tell their mothers that they actually don't want to go to her church, or her office holiday party, or that they are too busy to visit for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years.
Everyone pretends to be something they're not over the holidays because they're all about living up to expectations. But on Halloween, there are no expectations.
Halloween is the one day of the year that you can pretend as much as you want and no one will judge you. Halloween is the only holiday that isn't centered around pleasing other people. No one will criticize you for not making the 2,000-mile trek to your parents' house for this one. You can do whatever you want and Aunt Sue won't call your mother complaining that she didn't get to see you this year.
Thanksgiving and Christmas revolve around being overly nice to too many relatives. There is absolutely no reason to have 50 people over for an event over the holidays. You are not "super close" to every single person that happens to have the same ancestors as you. Sorry, but you just aren't.
Halloween is just a night to have fun. Children go trick or treating with friends, while adults throw parties and enjoy their own alcoholic treats. This is vastly different than people drinking to "get through the holiday season." If you have to get drunk to have Christmas dinner with your relatives, you should probably reconsider going.
Halloween has evolved over the years and in some circles, it has a bad reputation. To me and thousands of other people, it is a night to have fun and release your inner child in whatever way you see fit. No one cares what you do. No one judges. And your relatives don't badmouth you for not inviting them to your Halloween party.
I would pick candy corn and black cats over snowflakes and eggnog any day.
