In Which I Am a Stick in the Mud

Halloween is such an odd holiday to me. It seems like only yesterday we were celebrating it by slaughtering livestock for wintertime, right? We did this every year for whoknowshowlong, until one day it's like wha-bam! and we're hemming our gingham dresses up to out hoo-has.

I'd like to be a able to offer you a detailed, thoughtful analysis on what caused this shift in paradox, but that's not what I'm going to school for; because honestly, where can Holiday Studies 101 get me in life? And I'm too lazy to read the whole Wikipedia page.

I'd assume that somewhere down the line people realized it was sort of a BS endeavor to be wearing masks and lighting bonfires in an attempt to placate evil spirits that threatened the harvest. The specifics of this realization evolving into "so let's instead wear cheaply manufactured costumes that would fit my 12-year-old sister" I'm not sure. It might have something to do with the psychological need to embrace or acknowledge, and therefore release the fear of, one's "shadow aspect" -- those dark wants (e.g. to be OMG naughty) in our nature -- as Jung would say; or possibly as a way to gain control over others through shock, if someone felt she had very little power in her life. But I'm just taking a shot in the dark, here.

My point? Gorging on Twix, I love. Having Halloween being fashioned ever more surely into a holiday centered solely around skank wear, however, makes me cry a little in the dark. I miss the bed sheet ghosts and thrift store hobos of my childhood.