If you’re like me (meaning you’ve trained yourself to ignore the aggravating displays of Halloween paraphernalia that replace the school supplies after the last week in August), then it’s probably also starting to dawn on you that Halloween actually is right around the corner! Because I think Halloween is a bit of a nostalgic holiday, I’ve decided to reflect on how my celebration of Halloween has evolved over the years. Here are five stages that I think all former trick-or-treaters will relate to:
Stage 1: The School Parade Stage
This was the stage where everyone came to school decked out in full Halloween attire and it wasn’t weird. There was most likely some type of organized costume parade that parents were invited to, maybe with prizes and definitely with LOTS of pictures. At least some of the day was allocated for classroom Halloween parties or another similarly festive activity, but most of your time was spent bartering away the goody-bag candy you didn’t like with everyone else (except that one kid with allergies who had to stick to pretzels). You probably had a chintzy store-bought costume unless your mom was crafty or just flat-out refused to buy one. Someone’s costume definitely malfunctioned – maybe a key prop disappeared, makeup was smudged during reckless candy-eating, or the outfit was just generally unprepared for the clumsiness of an elementary-schooler. You loved Halloween – 10/10.
Stage 2: The Independent Trick-or-Treating Phase
This was the stage where you were allowed to trick-or-treat with a group of friends or an older sibling, but NO ADULT. You felt ridiculously mature cutting across people’s lawns, ding-dong ditching, and eating your candy as you walked rather than saving it for when you got home. Because you knew all the best houses (e.g., those that left out giant bowls or gave out king-size candy bars), you didn’t have to stop by that one neighbor who your parents would awkwardly show you off to and attempt to make conversation with. You were at your trick-or-treating PRIME – which meant your costume game was more important than ever – and creativity was the key word. It didn’t matter what you were as long as A. No one else was going as the same thing or B. You didn’t buy your costume (store-bought basics like the princess, the devil, and the cat were SO elementary school). Halloween just gave you this sense of wild freedom that made you want to run away and join a troupe of dancing pumpkins – 12/10 (unless you ate so much candy you made yourself sick – 9.5/10).
Stage 3: The No-Trick-or-Treating-and-Salty-about-It Phase
At long last, a parent/neighbor/friend posed the dreaded rhetorical question: “Aren’t you too old to be trick-or-treating?” There was no possible way to answer “no” and preserve your pride – so you either agreed or just kind of mumbled sadly to yourself. As soon as the initial shock wore off, you were determined to have the best Halloween EVER even without trick-or-treating, and tried to figure out just how you could possibly make that happen. You were too young to go to an actual Halloween party, so you probably ended up getting together with some friends to watch scary movies, eat too much candy, and most likely dramatically fail at making candy apples, popcorn balls, vampire cookies, or some other ~spooky~ baked good you found on Pinterest. If you didn’t have friends over or just got really nostalgic, you helped your parents hand out candy and got extremely irritated if someone rang the doorbell more than once or skipped the doorbell altogether and just banged on the door. By the end of the night, you understood why people yelled at stubborn trick-or-treaters that wouldn’t go home. This stage didn’t get a rating because you were trying to convince yourself that Halloween was childish and you voluntarily chose not to participate (but if you were being honest with yourself it got at most a 4/10).
Stage 4: The Actual Halloween Party Stage
By this stage, you had (mostly) stopped being salty about no longer trick-or-treating because you were getting invited to ACTUAL Halloween parties (Mean Girls, anyone?) that most likely had very little to do with Halloween. Costume standards had reached an all time low, with the majority of girls wearing some type of animal ears paired with a strictly unrelated outfit. You discovered that the tacit dress code seemed to be based on maintaining an inverse relationship between the amount of clothing and amount of makeup worn – and you’ve almost definitely gone to a Halloween party and been embarrassingly over-costumed. By the end of the night, you might be a bit disgruntled that Halloween was hijacked as an excuse to forego homework and party on a weeknight (7/10). Either that, or you don’t remember the night enough to give it a solid rating – ?/10.
Stage 5: The Reinterpretation Stage
After caring immensely about Halloween, pretending not to care, and then pretending to care about irrelevant aspects of it, you’ve finally come to the conclusion that it isn’t worth your time and energy to force Halloween to be something not enjoyable for you. If you want to eat an entire bag of candy until you feel sick – go for it. If going to a casual Halloween party ridiculously over-costumed gets your adrenaline pumping, start prepping now. If scary movies and pumpkin baked goods are calling your name, by all means stock up on orange and black sprinkles. Whether all or none of the above stages apply to you, this one most definitely does – so if you’ve blown off Halloween in past years or have subscribed unwillingly to someone else’s interpretation of it, I encourage you to reclaim your own individual Halloween spirit – bring back the 12/10.
HCXO,
Katie