Halloween, as a holiday, has always confused me. Is it really a holiday? Has it just become a weird celebration filled with pumpkin-shaped candy and college students dressing up as the most random things they can think of? I’m not sure about my own feelings about the Halloween season so I decided to see what some of my fellow freshman gals thought about the upcoming festivities of October 31st.
When asked if Halloween was a real holiday (admittedly, a rather vague question), Maddie Brown ‘20 sassily replied “What is a real holiday?”. Since that didn’t clear up any of my inner turmoil, I turned to Anna Zhang ‘20, who gave a clearer answer, stating that she believed “it is a holiday in the sense that it’s a tradition.” Which is very true. Halloween revolves around all sorts of traditions: trick-or-treating, dressing up as something scary or sweet, telling ghost stories around a flashlight (actually, I think that’s only done in movies…), and for college students – the tradition of a weekend of partying.
Which brought me to my next question – did Maddie and Anna like to get involved in all the Halloween “hype” that occurred on college campuses? Both girls had similar replies, explaining that they enjoyed the festivities and definitely liked to dress up and have fun. Maddie is planning to be parmesan cheese for Halloween which prompted the obvious question of “…why?”.
“Well my boyfriend is being a chicken so together we’re chicken parm!”
Which, really, makes a whole lot of sense when you think about it. Aren’t the best Halloween costumes those that involve puns? And especially ones about food!
Anna’s costume was slightly more straightforward, as she’s planning to be a boxer, but when pressed she wouldn’t say if that meant a cute boxer, a scary boxer, or a hardcore fighter. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
Talking to Anna and Maddie helped me see how other college students like to celebrate the excitement revolving around Halloween and gave me some more ideas about how I might want to spend my weekend. Though I don’t think I can come up with something nearly as clever as chicken parm, I still have a few days to figure it out. Ultimately, even though Halloween may be heavily commercialized – so commercialized in fact that it’s hard to decipher where the initial celebration and traditions come from – it’s still a fun opportunity for kids of all ages (including college students, because really we aren’t adults yet) to get out and have some old-fashioned fun, pretending to be something we’re not for a night, and eating way too much candy corn until we feel sick even looking at it.
Happy Halloween to everyone, and don’t forget to eat lots of candy!