Halloween: A Rant

I'm told that today is a holiday.

But everyone is still going to school and work and everything, so I say lies.

My family has never celebrated Halloween, and to be honest, despite it being a holiday primarily centered around candy and sweet things, it certainly leaves sort of a bad taste in my mouth.

(Ho, I'm so clever. Forsooth.)

So yeah, I don't like Halloween.

And as usually goes with my blog posts, this started with a thought.

"Wow, Halloween is really stupid."

Then it became a snarky Facebook status.

Then I thought, "Wow, Halloween is so stupid that I could probably write a whole blog post about why I don't like it."

And here we are, friends.

One of the things I think is really weird about Halloween is the fact that our neighbors who ignore us all year suddenly think it's okay to come knocking on our door asking for candy. In what universe does it make any sense that I am randomly going to give you my precious Snickers bars and peanut butter cups? I wasn't gonna give them to you yesterday, I'm not going to give them to you tomorrow, and I sure as anything am NOT going to give them to you today.

Another thing that I don't like about Halloween is the fact that adults and parents can be absolutely psychotic. Some parents seem to try to vicariously relive their childhood Halloween memories through their children by forcing their children to dress up and dragging them from house to house collecting sugary loot like Viking plunderers. 

This is pretty much the most accurate depiction of Halloween night I've ever seen.

On sort of a side note, I've never been a parent but it's been my observation that it's very difficult to force kids to do things they don't really want to do.

For example, that totally cute pumpkin costume for your little one?

Expectation

Bitter reality

And can you blame the poor kid? That pumpkin's face clearly says, "I'm currently absorbing your soul."

Something else I don't like about Halloween is the fact that I saw one witch in the Publix bakery this morning and then I saw another one hanging out by the orange juice. I am not okay with that.

But the thing that really sealed the deal for me on not liking Halloween is how we have to do Halloween night in our house.

The first wave of trick-or-treaters usually comes right around sunset. A lot of times we go out to dinner or something to avoid them, but by the time it's dark outside, if you look out the window the streets are packed so full you can't drive through. Kids are swarming the houses like cockroaches. Plus, some people actually come to our neighborhood especially for trick-or-treating, which personally I think is cheating. If your neighborhood isn't good enough for you, that's your fault for not taking into account the trick-or-treatability before you moved there.

From each according to how bogus they think Halloween is, to each according to how well they planned ahead for Halloween. 

In other words, if I didn't hate Halloween and I was giving out treats, fully-committed Napoleon Dynamite who knows the entire dance is getting a whole bag of peanut butter cups, while five-minute sheet-ghost over here is getting celery sticks.

We turn off all our lights and put a heavy blanket over our front door. And that's pretty much how we spend Halloween night, barricaded in our home while strangers loot and plunder our village.

In conclusion, I strongly dislike Halloween and I think it should go away.

However, I must admit that there is one thing I like about this ridiculous holiday.

Day-after-Halloween candy clearance - in other words, the day that Meredith blows all her money on peanut butter cups and gallons of milk, cocoons herself in fuzzy blankets, and watches Jane Austen movies all day.

Now there's a holiday I can really get into.