I like Halloween. Not for the religious aspects of it, not for the shock aspects of it, but for the sheer fun that Halloween gives us permission to have.
It’s full of creativity, of masks, and the removing of masks, of laughter and camaraderie, of community and food, and so much more.
I love Nightmare before Christmas because it depicts the spirit that is Halloween – and the implication that any holiday can be Halloweened up.
Halloween is not about scaring people so much as it’s about seeing things differently. Seeing things darkly and brightly, glittered up and set in unusual places. We make food in the shape of unusual things because we don’t normally eat brains and toads and lollipop mice. We don’t normally dip crispy fingers in strawberry jelly sauce and eat them with relish. We don’t normally delight in masking things and making them appear to be other. It’s a time of year when the different and the weird and the unexpected are accepted as the norm.
I am delighted with the new offerings coming from the halloween stores and catalogs this year – last year had such a dismal dearth of new and exciting things.
The Halloween Duckies and Finger Puppets are fun, and that Hershey’s named one of their bags of mixed candies “Scare and Share” pleases me so much [1] because of the implication that it’s meant to be shared. I get so tired of all the selfish, hoarding food commercials that one that advertises it’s meant to be shared makes me happy.
That’s one of the things I love most about Halloween – it’s the only holiday we celebrate in America that is so community-oriented. Christmas has become a monument to greed and selfishness in spite of so many people’s best efforts. Thanksgiving is family oriented, but not really much for community activities – a parade and a football game. Easter is the province of only a handful of religions and ignored pretty much by everyone else. July 4th is community-oriented, but it’s a very limited community involvement – fireworks that many local governments do their best to ban or limit and a few parades and picnics, and that’s it. Memorial Day, Labor Day, Veteran’s Day – we all come together for a picnic and a parade and a speech, and that’s pretty much it.
But for Halloween – we have days of parties, creative foods and decorations that linger, games, and masks, and dancing, and meeting new people. Halloween is one of the few times people feel it’s OK to not only talk to strangers, but to play with them.
I love all of Halloween, just because it’s such a friendly, giving, and sharing holiday.
[1] not enough to buy it since I’m boycotting Hershey’s since they replaced vanillin with artificial vanilla extract, and made other changes so that Hershey’s may no longer be halal or kosher. I have too many different kinds of people raiding my candy dishes for me to have questionable candy in it.
Edited to correct a bazillion typos….
Ebonypearl 
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