I Hate Halloween

There, I said it.

Halloween is for kids, because it's a candy holiday.  If you're older than, say, 12, then Halloween sucks.  Except if you're a teenager invited to parties with alcohol, which I never was. 

So, Halloween sucks.  And I hate it.

I loved Halloween when I was little.  I had a beautiful blue lace dress that my grandmother had sewn for a family wedding.  So I went as a princess every year for, like, 6 years in a row.  Being a princess and getting candy, awesome.

After that, though, it all goes downhill.

I'm too fat for any commercially-available costumes.  Every year that I ever had to shop for a costume, I vowed I would lose weight the next year, so I could fit into one.

I never have anywhere to go to dress up for anyway.  Which is good, so that means I can stop promising I'll lose weight every year because, lets face it, that's more work now than it's probably worth.

I hate being scared, even more now that I'm older, and I hate ugly grotesque representations of dead people, which is a hallmark of the "holiday".

I even hate the color orange.

When I was in elementary school - I believe the 4th grade? - I went to a Halloween party at another school with a friend.  A male friend, son of my mother's best friends.  Girls were just discovering boys, and boys were just discovering that girls were discovering boys, and he didn't want anyone to think I was his girlfriend.  So he ignored me all night. 

My mom loves costumes.  She had come up with this off-the-wall idea to make me into a Bag of Jellybeans for Halloween.  I wore a leotard and tights, and a clear plastic garbage bag filled with balloons and tied around my neck.  Ingenious.  She was so proud.  I was hoping to not be humiliated.

So I'm at a strange school with strange kids.  I know one person who is determined to ignore me.  The Parade of Costumes begins where we all walk around the gym in a circle to see who wins the costume prize.

When the garbage bag breaks in my crotch area and I start losing balloons.  Total and utter public humiliation.

Go ahead, laugh at the mental image of a 10-year-old kid pooping balloons.  It's pretty funny, if it didn't happen to you.

I'm sure this has nothing to do with why I hate Halloween.

For the last 6 years before my Wee One was born, I managed to avoid all things Halloween.  I was never invited to any parties, I didn't have to get a costume.  I lived in an apartment, so I didn't even have to deal with trick-or-treaters.  I could just sit at home and get drunk by myself like all good curmudgeons college professors do.  Trying to avoid students, you know.  Bonus if Halloween falls on a weekend with good football, because then you don't even have to suffer with nothing to watch on tv but scary movies.

Ah, but once you're a parent, you sometimes have to do things you don't want to do.  Like ... Halloween.

My parents are all about Halloween.  They hang a sheet on the garage door and show scary movies and play scary music.  My mom starts buying candy in May and she talks about it for weeks beforehand.

Last year, I inherited in some hand-me-down box, an infant pumpkin costume.  So I put it on my Wee One to have her photo taken, and then we hung out at Nan's house while she joyed in handing out candy and playing the scary stuff on the sheet/screen.  Actually, she made my dad hand out candy and she went inside to open a bottle of wine.  I did the "Oh, look, the baby is tired, we have to go home now" thing.  Sorry that it's only 7:00 and trick-or-treating has just started, we have to go now.

So I managed to escape last year mostly unscathed.

But, as it always does, it's coming again.  And I've started to really think about it.

I don't want to celebrate Halloween.

Sure, I'll get my Wee One a cute costume, because it's a great excuse to dress her up like a cow.  Or a cat.  I think we're going with cat, it's cheaper.

I don't want to take her trick-or-treating.  I don't want to hang with Nan while she gives out candy.  I want to hide in my house and pretend the whole orange, scary, stupid holiday doesn't exist.

I think I need some therapy.