I Don't Heart Halloween

I hate Halloween. I don’t understand why, during this one month of the year, Satan worship doesn’t raise eyebrows. I have seen gore in front yards in neighborhoods around town that would be R-rated if it were a movie. It makes me wonder about people on my street who I think of as nice and harmless. Nice and harmless until they hang pretend severed heads from their lilac tree in the front yard. Hmmm.

I also hate the pressure of having to dress up in a ridiculous costume, I hate having to even come up with an idea for a ridiculous costume. And it bugs me that nobody really seems to know the origin of Halloween—Pagan? Celtic? Mexican? Dia de los Muertos?? No, wait, that’s the day after Halloween…You should know the reason for celebrating something. Ok, maybe not always —I love, love, love St. Patrick’s Day, and I cannot tell you if the story of Paddy driving the snakes out of Ireland is accurate. And I don’t even drink beer.

But back to Halloween. There is a guy who works the front desk at the Gold’s Gym I go to. He is proudly homosexual, and flits around that place like a hummingbird, flirting with every man (and woman, now that I think about it), who walks past him. Last year, when I got to the gym to work out the night before Halloween, all the gym employees were dressed in costume. This guy was dressed in a toga, complete with Laurel leaves encircled about his head. His look was not the frat-boy-I’m-emptying-this-keg-tonight variety. Nor was he aiming for a philosophical feel, with the rough, woolen garment of, say, Socrates or Pythagoras. No, this guy was fully the decadent, Roman bath house era toga-wearer. He looked all kinds of ready to embrace the debauchery that is implicated by a gay man wearing a toga. I am uncomfortable with people who use Halloween as an excuse to dress the way they really would, if society would allow them.

I know people who absolutely adore Halloween. They love an excuse to put together a costume. I know a woman who is bummed out that she doesn’t have children because that would be an even bigger excuse to dress up and celebrate Halloween. Why do people enjoy dressing as someone/thing else? Drag queens dress as someone else. Transvestites permanently dress as someone else. People robbing banks wear Richard Nixon masks or false beards. Or balaclavas. I don’t wish to be anyone else. I don’t enjoy dressing to look like anyone else. Maybe the real issue is that I don’t want people looking at me any more than is necessary. Really, one of my worst fears is to be dressed, perhaps as Raggedy Ann, complete with red yarn hair and eyeliner freckles, and get into a car accident. Can you imagine having to be picked up by (handsome and strong) EMTs whilst your warty, green nose from your witch’s costume is askew and your black, stringy wig is sliding down your head? Or can you imagine your child’s school catching on fire while you’re the room mom for the Halloween party and having your silken pirate shirt melt and give you third degree burns, all while (handsome and strong) firefighters are trying to give you CPR but they can’t because your huge, swashbuckling hat and feather is in the way?? Seriously.

So, while I love any holiday for my kids, (and as far as my preschoolers go, forget Christmas! They would take their Halloween party over anything else!) I will buck up, close my mouth and don an orange shirt and skeleton earrings for one night. Wish me luck.