When I was a little kid, Halloween felt idyllic.
Pretty much as soon as the first leaf hit the ground, we'd drag out our family's box of Halloween decorations and start setting up the scarecrows and pumpkins and ghosts. We'd pull out past year's costumes and spend a few days scaring each other with the creepy masks buried at the bottom. We'd carve pumpkins and light them with candles on our front stoop and hang the fake cobwebs.
When Halloween night came, all the kids in my hometown would get dressed up in our costumes and flood the streets. Yellow and orange leaves coated the sidewalks as we bopped from porch light to porch light, seemingly hitting every house in town on our trick-or-treating tour. We'd run into our friends along the way and race each other to the houses we knew had the good candy, and smile politely when the lady with the popcorn balls placed them gently into our buckets. Jack-o'-lanterns greeted us at every door.
After our buckets and bags were brimming over with candy, we'd all converge at the school for the annual Halloween party. There was a cake walk, carnival games, a haunted house put on by the high schoolers, and the evenings always ended with a costume contest. After the party, we'd shuffle our tired feet over to our grandparents' house across the street to show them our costumes and dig into our loot.
It was wholesome and magical. When I think about it, Halloween back then was sparkly, full of twinkling lights, howling winds and glowing pumpkins. Everyone was wide-eyed and giddy, hopeful that we might catch a glimpse of something extraordinary before bedtime.
I feel like I've been chasing that feeling for years now, and I know I'm not alone. People are saying they're nostalgic for that type of Halloween again, but I don't necessarily see us doing anything to reclaim that feeling. In fact, a lot of the ways we celebrate Halloween today are pushing us in the opposite direction of that starry-eyed wonder we used to know, and instead, the holiday lately feels more like we're all checking off an item on our annual to-do list.
To start, somewhere along the way we as a society decided Halloween costumes need to be as niche or unique as possible to be good ones. Too many costumes these days are just concepts. I recently saw an idea to dress as a mitochondria, but the costume was just a t-shirt with a picture of a mitochondria on it. Another trend I've seen this year is to dress up as a cocktail, but instead of actually dressing up to look like an espresso martini, you just dress in all brown and drink an espresso martini all night.
Halloween costumes are meant to transform you into something else. They don't need to be scary or over-the-top, but I think people have become too afraid of being basic or off-trend. We're worried about fitting an aesthetic or whether or not our costume will make a good Instagram post, when we should be choosing costumes that are expressions of who we are and that are true to the holiday. We should go back to the classics. I want to see more vampires, more mummies, more Frankenstein's monsters. We don't need to overthink it.
Trick-or-treating has changed, too. Trunk-or-treating, which is like tailgating for Halloween, has become more and more popular since the COVID-19 pandemic. And more communities are holding their trick-or-treating on nights other than Oct. 31 because it's more convenient to do it on a weekend.
Why are we doing that? I think that dulls the magic of the actual day of Halloween, but I also think it takes away the practical benefits and the community aspect of the holiday. Trick-or-treating, at a basic level, teaches kids how to approach strangers, get to know their neighbors, be social, express individuality, share, and say please and thank you.
And don't get me started on the trendy new "boo baskets," which are essentially Easter baskets in October. Halloween isn't a holiday centered around gifts, which is part of its charm.
There are a lot of societal trends that are causing us to celebrate Halloween this way. We're busier than we have ever been, and after the pandemic, we're less social and less trusting of strangers. We're aren't as involved with community groups and events as much as we used to. We're obsessed with the aesthetic of things rather than our personal preferences. We're craving convenience more than ever, and we're consuming more. Our attention spans are growing shorter, too, and it seems like as soon as one season or holiday approaches, we're ready to move on to the next one just as fast (I'm looking at you, early Christmas commercials).
But the good thing about all of this is that it's in our power to change these trends.
At its core, Halloween is all about community, and it's about effort. It's truly a party that we throw just for the heck of it. While Halloween's history is rooted in religion, the way we celebrate it today is one of the only holidays we have that's not centered around a historic event or gift-giving. It's simply a day for celebration. We don't have to carve the pumpkins or set out the skeletons or get dressed up — we do it because it brings us joy and fulfillment, and because it brings us together with our friends and family and neighbors.
And I think to reclaim that nostalgic Halloween feeling, we need to go back to these basics.
So this is my call to you Halloween lovers and anyone else who has been pining over the feeling that this holiday used to give us: Go all out. Pick out a costume you love, decorate your house, hand out candy on Halloween night. Maybe choose a tradition from your childhood to recreate this year, or start a new one, like making popcorn balls for trick-or-treaters. You don't need to spend hundreds of dollars or just as many hours to get ready for this holiday, because perfection is not what Halloween calls for. Be authentic to yourself and don't be afraid to be basic.
We're in control of creating the magic.
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