Halloween takes place on October 31 every year. This strange holiday has been around for over 2,000 years and people all over the world celebrate it. Halloween was originally seen as a day when the souls of dead people would come back and roam the earth. People would dress in animal skins in their subpar attempt to blend in and not be seen by the ghosts. This clearly went well because there is absolutely nothing suspicious about a six-foot-tall raccoon attempting to hide behind a tree.
However, just a few short years later, these same people decided to celebrate the ghosts’ arrival rather than flee from them. This celebration morphed into the abomination of a holiday we have today.
The average American household will spend over $100 a year on Halloween. People will groan about gas prices but won’t bat an eye when purchasing a blue hedgehog suit for $50. Additionally, with the prices of everything going up, the average family will spend almost $40 on candy. It is crazy how some people will spend that money on candy for random kids that show up at their house dressed up as demons but will not buy their own kid a Hershey’s from the Walmart checkout line. For comparison, you could buy 40 bananas, three pounds of strawberries, four pork chops, and eight chicken breasts for that same price. Essentially, feed a family of four for two full days or let the Minecraft creepers feast on your doorstep.
Halloween as a whole is just really confusing. Schools and parents constantly tell their kids, “Don’t take candy from strangers,” and then fully endorse trick-or-treating. What is the difference? There is none! Getting dropped off in a random neighborhood with nothing to protect me but an empty plastic pumpkin head and foam sword is completely fine, but the friendly guy in the big white van is going to steal me. That is confusing! Halloween is just a contradiction to a ton of things that kids have been taught their entire lives. We were told that demons and monsters are bad, yet we dress up as them. We are taught to never take candy from strangers, then our families become the strangers handing it out!
Pumpkin carving is equally as confusing. We as humans seem to have an obsession with manipulating food and plants. We put trees in our house during Christmas, and during Halloween, we carve pictures in gourds. I know Halloween has been around for over 2,000 years, but what caveman came up with this tradition? Families purchase these pumpkins, slice faces and other pictures into them, and then set them outside their houses to rot. Maybe I could get behind it as a way to repel trick-or-treaters by placing molding squash near your door, but other than that I’m not sure why you would want to carve pumpkins.
If your family enjoys Halloween, don’t let me stop you, but if you’re on the fence and asking yourself, “Am I too old for this?” my answer is, “100%.” Being a delusional little kid and going around trick-or-treating is completely fine if you enjoy being potentially kidnapped. However, if you are a full-blown teenager who knows how strange this holiday is, and you still go, that is a bit of a problem.