Halloween is a beloved day for people of all ages, even though it likely means something drastically different depending on how old you are. If you like Halloween for the parties, you probably don’t like it at all.

Say what you will about its origins, at its core, Halloween is a day for kids. It entails dressing up as a spooky fictional character or creature and going door-to-door collecting tiny chocolate bars — something that’s a whole lot cuter and a lot less threatening when you’re pre-pubescent.

As we get older, the prospect of begging strangers for candy becomes a little less accepted and appealing. We lose interest in chocolate bars and become more interested in going to bars. Still, Oct. 31 remains an incredibly popular pseudo-holiday among students — and even bonafide grown-ups — long after we abandon trick-or-treating. Therein lies the problem.

The adult equivalent of Halloween bears little resemblance to what kids do. In truth, adult Halloween is more about getting drunk and wearing sexy costumes. It gets deprived of its true meaning and turned into another excuse to party — just like practically every other holiday.

The only real continuity comes from wearing costumes, but even then, costumes tend to get a bit racier as we get older. For every ghost and ghoul, there’s a sexy kitten or Long Dong Silver the pirate.

This doesn’t seem right. When I step back to think about it, I have to ask myself, “Is nothing sacred? Can’t we just leave Halloween for kids?” Not everything aimed at children needs to be for adults too. Besides, it’s not like we really need yet another excuse to dress provocatively and get drunk.

It seems that most holidays and notable annual occurrences get corrupted — or at least re-imagined and transformed — as we get older, losing their original purpose and becoming convenient excuses to go to the bar.

St. Patrick’s Day is the obvious example — I don’t know what the real significance of the date is, do you? From what I’ve seen over the years on campus, most students don’t even wear green. They just take the opportunity to drink green beer.

New Year’s Eve, Mardi Gras and Canada Day are just more of the same thing. They’re three days with very different origins, yet their relevance falls by the wayside and we celebrate them all the same way.

While none of these revisionist holidays are particularly good things, I can loosen up enough to accept that most are relatively harmless. However, it seems that the adult version of Halloween is the one case that poses a serious problem.

We’re taking what should be a benign, innocent holiday  and making it into something steeped in an awkward, humorous eroticism.

It’s worth noting that I understand the original meaning of Halloween wasn’t about children begging their neighbours for candy either, but that’s not the issue at hand.

At the risk of sounding like an old coot, kids grow up so quickly. The last thing we should be doing is taking a more-or-less innocuous children’s holiday and taking it away from them.

I get it — we all like Jell-O shots and looking sexy and partying, and we don’t need to take the adult fun out of every holiday and annual event. But maybe Halloween is a day best left to the trick-or-treaters.

After all, we have the good decency to leave Easter alone, and goodness knows there’s a lot to work with when it comes to over-sexualizing that day.

—

Image: Jeremy Britz / Graphics Editor