Halloween: A Holiday Hemorrhoid.

The end of September is drawing near.  Slowly we are adjusting to a new fall schedule and my oldest son is settling into school.  The weather is unpredictable and sporadic and will feel like the dawn of winter one moment and the heart of summer the next.  The back-to-school sales have ended and in a desperate need to fill every season with an insane marketing scheme the Halloween enticements are out in abundance.  It is not only the stores that are trenched in for the rest of September and through October, but the houses, sprinkled through out the town, have begun to morph into wax museums, haunts, and general gaudy holidayness. 

It is a damning indictment of our culture that we can spend well over two months (in Costco Halloween paraphernalia was out at the end of August) on Halloween and go straight to Christmas, letting Thanksgiving fall as an after thought, the bastard holiday between the start of school and Christmas.

So, here is the thing, I hate Halloween.  It is with no small amount of trepidation and dread that Halloween approaches.  I was never scared by a hideous costume or yelled while trick-or-treating by surly homeowners.  I was never beat up and ransacked for candy by the neighborhood bully.  There is no trigger in my past for my dislike of Halloween, but a slow progression away from costumes and candy and disgusting masks and public foolishness.

I am not opposed to all public foolishness but I can't think of any I support.  It isn't just Halloween, i struggle with the "christian" derivative, the harvest festival, as well.  A harvest festival, where your encouraged to put on a costume, consume massive amounts of candy and treats and socialize in a group with other people who have been similarly encouraged and have cheerfully complied?  Yeah, Halloween!  Call it what it is and give it a rest.  There is nothing, at this point, to suggest that participation in Halloween makes you a pagan just as there is no reason that celebrating Christmas makes you a christian or celebrating thanksgiving makes you thankful. 

At the heart of it I don't like putting on a costume, I would rather withdraw, than draw that sort of attention to myself (I know, everyone else is in costume to thus the attention spread out over a large number of people.  It doesn't feel that way.)  My dislike of costumes, or dress-up for all, has morphed into a general dislike of Halloween and all the accouterments that make it such a big deal.  As for the unspoken contest of who can be the most grotesque and shocking?  I have small children.  I am disturbed by the masks I see I can only imagine the effect it has on young, imaginative minds and I can not imagine a scenario where I would let my child wear some of the masks I see during Halloween.

Halloween has become my holiday hemorrhoid.  Annoying, somewhat uncomfortable and if I ignore it, maybe it will just go away.