One of the weird things about writing this column is the several-day gap between when it gets written and when it gets published, but I can make an educated guess that as you’re reading this, I’m on my way to work, furiously scrubbing at the leftover Halloween makeup caked onto my skin, trying to look as though I wasn’t frolicking downtown in full costume last night, and fighting the effects of a powerful sugar hangover.
Despite the hangover, I’m completely in favour of Halloween for adults, and I don’t just mean buying citrouille scones at the coffee shop (although I’m down with that, too: Pumpkin chai latté! Pumpkin chocolate porter! Pumpkin everything! Complete pumpkin saturation!).
One of the wonderful things about being an adult (she said, in the full maturity of her mid-20s) is knowing which traditions you’ve outgrown and which traditions are yours forever, and Halloween is one of the things I’ve sunk my claws into and will never let go.
We all have a story of our Last Christmas, before the math finally added up and we realized there probably weren’t reindeer on the rooftop. But we never stopped with Halloween.
We transitioned gradually from trick-or-treating with our parents or the neighbours to trick-or-treating on our own. We always dressed up, and never went as the same thing twice — that idea was anathema to us.
Every successive Halloween, we expanded our territory, exploring new streets, extending our curfews. The streets felt different on Halloween night. Not scary, exactly, but full of potential. We could do anything.
We grew taller, and had to invest in two costumes: One for school, and a mask for Halloween night, so nobody could see how close to the edge of trick-or-treating age we were treading.
Afterward, we went home to watch The Simpsons’ Treehouse of Horror and eat our candy.
We never figured out what the deal was with candy corn, but we ate it all the same. (My roommate points out that in Canada, one-third of day surgeries for children under the age of six are for dental work.)
There was, of course, the year everyone thought Halloween had died — the year you suddenly realized you didn’t want to wear your costume to school, because you were afraid it would be lame, only to realize the unwritten rules of middle school: The cool kids were allowed to do it, but you were trapped, unsure how close to the line your costume brought you.
I remember the carefully considered middle ground of wearing devil horns to my first Halloween dance. Still dressed up, but not too much effort, and therefore acceptable. I hoped. Those were dark days — I durst not dwell on them.
But then. Oh, glorious revelation! The day you realized you wanted to dress up and just didn’t care what anyone else thought. The day you realized Halloween wasn’t dead or lame — it had just been waiting for you to grow up a little.
That’s when costumes got really fun, when you stopped worrying about what other people thought and could throw the full force of your creative weight behind it. (I felt pretty good about myself the year I went as a Software Pirate.)
One of the joys of being an adult is knowing which group you belong to — the people who legitimately love dressing up, or the people who legitimately don’t — and behaving accordingly.
Some people celebrate Halloween by turning in early and feeling a sense of relaxation that they’re no longer forced to wear dumb shoes and dance to dumb music at an over-hyped pub crawl, or navigate the gaggle of kids at the community bonfire.
And I’m happy in the other camp, as the person who throws mandatory dress-up parties on Oct. 31 regardless of who has to work the next day and gives prizes for the most obscure costume pop-culture reference. (Not that I’m bragging, but I’m pretty sure my roommate and I have it in the bag — if anyone else dressed up as Welcome to Night Vale’s Cecil Baldwin this year, I want to see your pictures).
My point being, nobody’s too old for Halloween. Of course it’s ridiculous for adults to play dress-up: That’s the point! Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to scrub off this face paint.
