Why I hate Halloween

One of the worst holidays of the year is coming up and I’m not talking about Veteran’s Day. It’s Halloween, folks, and it makes for a rather dismal point in the academic year here at Cal Poly. Here, let me give you a background of my life story in order to explain how much I dislike Halloween.

Years 1-4: Too young to remember Halloween.

Years 5-8: Wore the same costume. It was a zip-up suit of a raccoon. Let’s just say I wasn’t as cool as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles out there.

Years 9-12: Various escapades as a pirate, ninja and possibly something even more depressingly cliché. Oh yeah, I was a zombie once. You see, at age 11, I had already attained the motivation of a 70-year-old when it comes to costuming. I wore normal clothes and put black make-up and fake blood on my face. If it hadn’t been Halloween, Social Services would have considered making a house call.

Year 13: I finally give up on Halloween. I throw a white sheet over the clothes I had worn to school that day, stuck some sprigs of Rosemary behind my ears and went as Caesar. I trudged behind my younger brother and his friends as they went from house to house to get candy. I never dress up for Halloween following that October. I’m now closing in on my 21st birthday.

It’s not that I didn’t like candy. Holy smokes, I love candy. But why must I spend money dressing up for free candy when I can put that money toward buying the candy, and then watch prime time reruns on the couch while feeling my fat cells replicate? Perhaps it’s some crippling social insecurity I have that prevents me from expressing myself in public? NO. NO, IT’S NOT THAT. DON’T EVER BRING THAT UP AGAIN.

Having spent this much time contemplating the idea of Halloween, I am a self-proclaimed expert on the holiday. Let me prove myself: Halloween started during the 1930s when one day in October President Roosevelt came to a cabinet meeting dressed as a woman. Unwilling to unveil Roosevelt’s shocking secrets to the public, the rest of his cabinet dressed in costumes in order to camouflage the issue from the public. They declared the day Halloween, which was the name of FDR’s prostitute alter ego.

Should you choose to celebrate Halloween, you have two options to go when decorating your house. First, you have the horror side of Halloween, where you stick hockey masks, bloody skulls, and the corpse of that homeless guy that you and your frat bros beat up the night before in a drunken rage all on your lawn. That decor should satisfy your immature 13-year-old mind. Or, if you think death is disgusting, you can go the cutesy direction with smiling cartoon pumpkins, smiling cartoon ghosts, and smiling cartoon witches pasted to your windows. How boring.

Do not carve pumpkins. If you live within a 15-mile radius of a fraternity or cowboy aggies, it will get smashed the night you put in on your doorstep (“Dude, man, that was frickin’ awesome! Yee-haw!”). The third option, the only one with dignity, is that you can celebrate Dia de los Muertos or All Souls Day, where instead of celebrating the dead rising to eat your family, you can celebrate the members of your family who have passed on, and remember their lives with a bittersweet fondness. Oh, few people here at Poly are familiar with traditional Mexican and/or Christian values.

Where did everyone go? I want to tell them about Dia de los Muertos! Oh, they’re all at Isla Vista. Many students at Cal Poly feel compelled to leave the sleepy town of San Luis for the sleepy locale of Isla Vista, which for Halloween wakes up for the flocks of Cal Poly and UCSB students who celebrate the holiday in the only way they know how: get crazy drunk. Isla Vista’s famed sights include the canals of alcohol-laced vomit that flow through the streets, the Running of the Kegs, and beautiful yellow pools that mysteriously appear on the side walks and reflect the moonlight in a luminous nitrogenous glow. Isla Vista also hosts the greatest concentration of STDs in America during this weekend outside of Paris Hilton’s bathroom.

Is it that I’m disgusted that the traditional method of celebrating Halloween, walking from house to house as a child to receive candy from my neighbors, has become an excuse for college students to lower their inhibitions, have promiscuous relations and drink themselves to death? Maybe at age 20 I’m already a crotchety old man who needs to loosen up. Hmm, no thanks.