Through the years, the premise of Halloween has changed. Every year the joy felt on Halloween has diminished for some while it still thrives in others.
Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash
When we were younger the excitement stemmed from picking out the best costume and trading candy the next school day. Getting ready to go out trick-or-treating was the worst. Your parents always made you put an ugly long-sleeve under your costume or pair your Cinderella dress with your light-up sneakers. Their reasoning is that it is dark, cold and you would eventually complain your feet hurt.
Trick-or-treating when you were younger meant beating the crowds to the houses that passed out huge candy bars and skipping the houses that gave out pretzels. It meant forced family pictures of you and your siblings dressed up head to toe holding your candy bags/pillow cases ready for candy. It meant getting home and sorting through your candy, maybe making trades with your siblings or giving the “gross” candy to your parents. If you have siblings like mine, it meant that once you sorted your candy, you had to find the best possible hiding spot to avoid potential thievery.
As we grew up it turned into who was going to get invited to parties that usually involved the typical bonfire and cheesy Halloween games. It meant pizza and Halloween themed treats. All the girls showed up together and had already taken some pictures to post the next day on Facebook but had to make sure to get a big squad picture so that everyone knew who was at the party.
There was always some type of drama because why wouldn’t there be? At some point in the night, someone would try to scare someone by hiding in a bush and jumping out. The night usually ended with someone finding out a person at the party has a crush on them. Sometimes someone would get asked out, but we all know middle school relationships aren’t a thing. If you didn’t attend a party then you snuck out in costume to get free candy even though you very well knew that you were way too old to be ringing someone’s doorbell for candy.
Onto college, Halloween becomes a whole week of celebration known as Halloweek. The various student organizations, sports and Greek life social with each other. Some social nights are themed while others are just a costume required type of thing. Girls trade costumes. Boys show up as the same thing every night. Scrolling through your Instagram feed can be painful seeing the same costumes from various different people or costumes that should have not been worn at all. Some costumes make you question whether or not the person has morals while others are just too creative not to steal the idea for yourself.