Reconnecting with the joy and weirdness of Halloween
As adults, why do so many of us feel like enjoying Halloween requires an audience?
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Every Halloween, I walk into the dollar store with a crisp C$20 bill and leave with as much cheap candy as I can reasonably carry. It’s usually enough to satisfy two important Halloween traditions: handing out sweets to trick-or-treaters and consuming my body weight in chocolate before the night is over. Once the candy is secured, the rest of the evening follows the same routine I’ve followed since the Covid-19 pandemic and trick or treating stopped being the norm. I put on a costume, drape my living room in all the cheap cobwebs and plastic skeletons I’ve collected over the years, dim the lights, and settle in for my Halloween movie marathon. These are my plans every year. They rarely change, and I look forward to them as soon as the first leaf falls in October.
My friends have described this ritual as the sort of Halloween a recently divorced father might have. Although their views are not entirely unfair—given that my celebration consists almost entirely of candy, decorations, scary movies, and my own company—to me, it’s the perfect celebration of my favourite holiday. Halloween has been my favourite holiday for as long as I can remember. I start looking forward to it the moment the weather cools and the air smells like pumpkin spice. What I’ve never understood, however, is how many people seem to stop enjoying Halloween the moment they’re expected to celebrate it alone.
Every year, I hear some version of the same complaint: there’s no party to attend, no group costume to join, no exciting plans to post about. Some of us are also under the impression that we’re somehow “too old” to truly celebrate. As a result, people who genuinely enjoy Halloween decided not to participate at all. They skip the costumes, the decorations, the movies, and the traditions they otherwise love. Somewhere between childhood and adulthood, excitement about Halloween seems to have become conditional on external social and environmental cues.
As children, we didn’t need a reason to celebrate Halloween. The holiday itself was the reason. So why, as adults, do so many of us feel like enjoying it requires an audience?
I think that part of the reason is that Halloween requires us adults to do something we rarely get to do: be unapologetically silly. The entire holiday and ritual of Halloween is built around things that would seem ridiculous on any other day of the year. We dress up as monsters, inanimate objects, sexy versions of characters, or even absurdly niche memes or cultural moments. We try to make our homes look haunted and then spend the evenings watching movies that give us nightmares.
Halloween is strange, theatrical, and a little absurd, yet so many people hesitate to participate unless everyone around them is doing the same. This has always puzzled me. If you enjoy Halloween, why should you sit and wait for permission to enjoy it? Maybe the real issue is that, as adults, we’ve grown uncomfortable doing things simply because they make us happy, and we don’t do things alone because we’re afraid we’ll be the only one’s doing it. It’s almost like everything needs a purpose or it needs to be productive, social, or somehow justified based on arbitrary rules attached to our age. A costume feels worthwhile if it gets worn to a party, decorations feel worthwhile if guests come over, a horror movie marathon is worthwhile if shared with others. Who are we performing for?
I think that most things can exist purely because they’re enjoyable. Halloween, of all holidays, should be one of them. There is a certain freedom in celebrating something for no one’s benefit but your own—no audience, no expectations, no social obligations—just genuine excitement. In some ways, I think that’s closer to how most of us experienced Halloween as children. We weren’t worried about whether our costumes were clever enough or whether enough friends were tagging along.
I think that’s why I admire this holiday so much. It gives us permission to embrace the weirdness we spend most of the year trying to hide and it gives us space to be creative and ridiculous without having to be particularly serious. This Halloween, I’ll once again spend C$20 on candy I absolutely do not need, wear a costume with nowhere in particular to go, and settle in for a movie marathon that nobody but me will watch. I challenge you to try and do the same. Live your lives to the fullest, and don’t wait for anyone to give you permission to do so. Happy Halloween!
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