Oh, my great goodness! Do you know what day it is?
“This is Halloween, Halloweeeeeeeen!”
Do you remember Halloween as a kid? It was so exciting to pick new costumes, get dressed up, and go out. We brought our Pocahontas pillowcases and took on the neighborhood like a soldier on strict military orders! Our eyes focused on one thing: candy—loads of it. Our mothers were frightened. They always tried to control how much we ate in one sitting so we wouldn’t get cavities. (Why did they never make a horror movie about cavities? I’m pretty sure our mommas would have been all over that.) For school, we dressed up in costumes and took the whole afternoon off from social studies and P.E. to eat cookies and color Halloween pictures. Remember when?
Then we moved on to middle school. Our neighborhoods forced us to stop trick-or-treating because they wanted us to “act our age”. No longer was it acceptable for us to take the whole afternoon to dress up and have Halloween parties at school. We had to learn algebra, memorize prepositions, and dissect frogs (which was a horror itself!). This was the first time in our lives that we were allowed to invite friends over for scary movie marathons. All of our girlfriends made sure we could sit by our crushes for comfort during the scary parts!
By the time we made it to high school, we looked at a more mature, sophisticated approach to Halloween. We decided we wanted to host the Halloween party of the year for 100 of our closest friends. We kicked our family out, picked “mature” costumes, music, food, and drinks to show that we were so over trick-or-treating. We had real scary movie marathons with our girlfriends, and, of course, we ate crazy amounts of candy, because who can resist an excuse to eat candy corn and chocolate?
Now we’re in college. We still want candy, and maybe we want to dress up, but there are lots of questions that run through our minds. Does dressing up on Halloween make us weird? Will anyone else dress up? Do we have to wear sexy costumes? Will people think we’re boring if we don’t go to any Halloween parties? The list goes on…
But the cool thing about Halloween is that, just like any holiday, you’re free to celebrate however you choose! If you want to curl up in your residence hall lobby and watch Disney Halloween specials, do it! If you want to eat tons of candy, buy individual bags and eat small amounts each day so you feel less guilty when you splurge. If you don’t want to go out this weekend, don’t; if you do want to go out, dress how you’re most comfortable. Just because you’re 18-23 doesn’t mean you still can’t let out your inner kid! Do it however you choose. Don’t worry about what anyone else says!
Make this Halloween yours. Have a ghoul weekend!