Why Halloween Is Awesome

Perhaps this is a little late in the week (as in the last day of the week), but I still made it! I realized last week that I have a lot of anti-Twilight posts on this blog ever since I decided to try this posting regularly thing. Now, while I probably could maintain a blog for 52 weeks a year with various postings on why Twilight sucks, this is, in fact, not an explicitly anti-Twilight blog. Thus I figured I have to start posting some things not related to Twilight. (Not to mention that, by writing about why I hate it so often, I'm in a way supplying advertising for the franchise, and I'd really rather not do that.) Hence, today's very timely topic: Why Halloween is awesome!

This post is inspired more or less by my boyfriend and his sadly Halloween-less childhood. Yes, he came from one of those staunchly conservative Catholic families that spurned Halloween and Harry Potter. For the record, Steve has no problem with Halloween or Harry Potter, and it's not just Catholics that unjustly freak out over Halloween. (Nor is it true that all Catholics or Christians even freak out over Halloween--my family loves Halloween! More on this later.) On a certain level, I suppose I can understand the Halloween uneasiness. No one's denying (as far as I know) the pagan origins of Halloween, and it is a celebration of all things scary, undead, creepy, and, for some, occult.

However...



While Halloween began as a high holy day of the pagan religion, for all but the most extreme anything actually occult--Satan worship, magic, etc.--has been stripped from it. If I'm playing the devil's advocate, I'd make an argument about how Halloween is actually a precursor for what's currently happening with Christmas: a religious holiday that's become increasingly commercialized and stripped of its religious meaning. But that's not the title of this post; the title is why Halloween is awesome. So here are some reasons why:

• Free candy. Childhood obesity naysayers probably freak out over Halloween. What I love about the whole childhood obesity thing is that everyone seems to pay attention to the eating, but not necessarily to the going outside and having physical activity. How much easier can it get: Get the kids on a sugar high, then send them out into the backyard to work it off! When I was a kid, my brother and I would bring garbage bags around and fill up from our neighborhood and 3 or 4 of the surrounding ones and bring back more candy than we could possibly hope to finish in a reasonable amount of time. Then we'd spend the next few days binging on sweets--the amount of candy taken in during those days probably equals the amount of candy eaten throughout the rest of the year--and afterward go back to a normal eating schedule. In the meantime, we'd totally spend our sugar rushes running around in the park or, if my Dad had a say, raking leaves and doing yard work. And although my brother is a little on the chunky side, you can see that we both managed to dodge the bullet of childhood obesity. So let the kids have their candy! Don't be that house that everyone hates that hands out apples or dental floss or pennies. (God, I frakking hated those houses that handed out pennies...) In fact, now I need some little kid to be my candy beard...
• Costumes. According to Mean Girls, "Halloween is the one night a year when girls can dress like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it." For some, I suppose that's reason enough to love Halloween. I never went for the slut thing. My mindset was always: A sanctioned day of dress up? AWESOME!! When I was a little kid, I was all about the girliest costumes: princesses, angels, fairies--though I guess one year I did wear my brother's Robin Hood costume. And then you got to wear them in public for everyone to see?? Where's the downside? Now that I'm older, it's certainly more about creativity: How can I put together, without going for an official, manufactured costume, this particular character? What kooky thing can I combine from what I already own? For minimal cost, I've put together: A pirate (all I bought was a striped shirt); Helena from the My Chemical Romance video; nondescript island girl; and, this year, Number Eight from BSG. Specifically, I went for Boomer in Season 1's "Kobol's Last Gleaming: Part 1," where, overcome with despair over her probable identity as a Cylon, Boomer shoots herself but fails actually to die and is left with a bandage on her face. For those who don't know and couldn't gather, she's the Asian one in the screenshot. Hehehe...Pictures to come later...
• An excuse to watch crappy scary movies. Some people don't need excuses to watch horribly awful scary movies, typically in the form of sequels to decent scary movies. I do. Only on Halloween will I allow myself to view the Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, and, of course, Halloween sequels. Constantine, Underworld, and other wannabe scary movies that take themselves way too seriously also make appearances. (And I know I'm letting people down because there are SO many shitty B-horror movies out there that I don't even know the names of, but what can I say? I only watch these movies once a year!) Naturally, actual scary movies can make appearances, too, but those can be celebrated all year round.
• Another reason to get drunk. Enough said. Only if you're old enough, of course.
  

~The Original Fong~
**You wish you could pull off being me**

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