There are people who really love Halloween, and there are people who think it shouldn’t count as a holiday. Halloween is basically dressing up and getting free candy from the strangers in your neighborhood you usually don’t talk to. Or Halloween is a symbol of fall and walking through the fallen leaves with friends and pumpkins all around. Or as Cady (from Mean Girls) once put it: “In the real world, Halloween is when kids dress up in costumes and beg for candy. In Girl World, Halloween is the one day a year when a girl can dress up like a total slut and no other girls can say anything else about it.” So really who is this holiday for?
Personally, I think Halloween is both for little and college kids. (Let’s just keep the celebrations separate.) As a little kid, Halloween is so exciting. You are absolutely overwhelmed by the amount of costumes to pick from at the store, and your smile lights up as you spin around in your favorite princess’s dress or jab the air with your plastic pirate sword. The elementary schools parade the kids around and give them candy, extending the holiday into an all day party. Then once you get into middle school, Halloween decreases slightly in quality. You’re in an awkward stage where you think you want an “adult” costume, but you certainly can’t pull off slutty while still wearing braces and training bras. Then, high school rolls around and you want to participate in Halloween, but the neighbors groan about having to give candy to you since you really aren’t cute anymore. And although parties might be an option, you’d still prefer the sack of free candy. But, interestingly enough, the pattern ends here. In college, the atmosphere and spirit for Halloween picks right back up!
Now, we all realize that Halloween in college might mean different things than Halloween for a preschooler. In college, Halloweekend is no doubt going to welcome turning up and dressing down. The slutty bunnies, cats, mice, angels, etc. are all going to be walking (stumbling?) through South O. But here’s the thing: it happens once a year. To an outsider, it might seem sloppy. It might seem like the wrong turn of events for this holiday to have taken. But I disagree. Halloweekend is something we can look forward to for all of October. We can bond with our friends over planning and making group costumes. And we can dance the night away dressed in clothes that we are proud to have made/found, despite the fact that they will never be appropriate after that one night. I think Halloween in college will be and should be embraced and celebrated. We’ll share the same enthusiasm we had for Halloween as kids but realize that we aren’t little kids anymore. So enjoy your costumes, your parties, your hookups, your hangovers. Halloween is for college kids too.