I Hate Halloween

I Hate Halloween.

There was a time I liked Halloween. Not anymore. It’s a commercial wankfest as big as Christmas. From two hundred dollar princess costumes to plastic glowing skulls to coffee shops charging five dollars for admission to, get this, their “coffee shop Halloween party” (yes, I just came back from a local fair trade coffee palace advertising this), Halloween is a money sucking faux holiday.

Now I have gone to my fair share of Halloween parties, in various states of consciousness. I have dressed as Elizabeth I, Julie Andrews, a knight and, when the imagination started failing, a nurse. But in the last ten years the marketing of Halloween has made participating seem obligatory. I don’t want to walk into my bank and see it festooned with tombstones and ghosts. I don’t need the reminder that I’ll be dead before I see my money again. Just give me my rapidly dwindling resources and feck off.

I don’t think I’ve ever given candies away to kids on Halloween. I always make sure I’m out at a movie or something. When you’re single and you live alone, giving candies to children, well, I dunno …I feel suspect. I don’t have much to do with children all year — why start now?

I once liked Halloween. “It’s The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown” with its moody backgrounds, pumpkin patch worship and Vince Guaraldi bass and piano riffs captured the essence of a once otherworldly night, a night where the veil between the here and hereafter slipped just a bit.

Now Halloween and all its crappy, soulless merchandise is just another amateur night.

Bah!