In Praise Of...Halloween

 


Welcome to the first entry in our new non-fiction series In Praise Of…, where we talk about a person or element of horror pop-culture that we feel is worthy of praise. This week we discuss...



Little wolf skin boots

And clove cigarettes

An erotic funeral

For which she's dressed

Her perfume smells like

Burning leaves

Every day is Halloween

-Type O Negative, “Black No. 1”


Naturally, I fell in love with Halloween as a child. Any celebration as a child is magical. Christmas, Easter, hell, even other people’s birthdays. It’s a break from the norm, the boring dullness of not being allowed to do anything you want. And people may even give you stuff!

For me as a child, and I suspect most children feel the same way, Halloween rivaled even the be-all-end-all kid’s favorite holiday of Christmas. Sure, there was trick or treating and dressing up in scary costumes, which is always fun. There was also the lead up though: Trips to Party City, endlessly thinking about what your costume was going to be and how to get it looking perfect, haunted hayrides, haunted houses, decorations, and possibly my favorite at the time, heavily censored R-rated horror movies on basic cable.

It’s like October 1st hit and for exactly one month the world became weird and wonderful.

As I aged I struggled with how, or even if, I should be celebrating such a “childish” holiday. I eventually stopped trick or treating (long after I’d surpassed a socially acceptable age to do so), and I rounded out my teen years typically celebrating by watching one of the lesser Halloween franchise movies with tepid enthusiasm while doing homework.

Eventually I figured out new (and more age appropriate) celebrations: trawling halloween and craft stores for more spooky shit I don’t need to add to the piles of spooky shit festooning my apartment, watching all my spooky movie faves, and of course, the perennial favorite, drunken parties with best friends. Parties in general are great, but when everyone is shit faced on pumpkin spiced beer and the skeleton is now hooking up with the dinosaur and they’re both covered in fake cobwebs, that’s divine.

In my adult years I've struggled to articulate why I like Halloween. Why do I feel the need to celebrate, or even acknowledge, this bastardized American version of a Celtic tradition? Let’s be real, for any horror fan, as trite as it may be these days, every day is Halloween. What makes this one day special? 

Each year I pull out the decorations and each year I struggle even more than the previous to find room amongst my horror toys, posters, books, comics and other memorabilia to display them. Each year I wonder what I should watch because I’m already caught up on all the new buzzed about horror movies and do I really need to see John Carpenter’s Halloween or Evil Dead or Re-Animator again? And each year I wonder how the party I attended was different from all the others held during the rest of the year, the costumes and decorations aside. 

And the answer is so obvious.

For exactly one month of the year the rest of the world gets on my level and matches my intensity for all things both creepy and spooky. It’s almost like for 31 days I get to go “see, isn’t this great?!” And there’s something special about that.

To paraphrase Morrissey, I’m happy the outside is Halloween, because Halloween is how I feel on the inside.

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