Trick or Treat, Reject Conceit

Connor White

There’s more than one way to dress yourself up as a monster, and every Halloween, scores of them emerge with the sole purpose of ruining the holiday for as many people as possible. Whether it’s insisting on banning the holiday because of alleged paganistic or satanic origins, complaining about the oversexualization of characters and costumes, or just being one of those awful houses that hands out toothbrushes instead of candy, there are always those that believe a holiday should (or shouldn’t) be celebrated a certain way.

To all you lovers of Hallow’s Eve, I offer a piece of advice: Ignore these pretentious, narcissistic, narrow-minded curmudgeons, and just enjoy yourselves.

It’s a problem every holiday has to suffer through. During Christmas, you’re forgetting the reason for the season; during Valentine’s Day, you’re buying into the greed of chocolate corporations. Halloween is no different: you’re celebrating this holiday wrong, and those self-absorbed Jack(ass) Skellingtons will remind you every five minutes.

Holidays are not checklists that must be followed, disbarring any fringe traditions that pop up now and then. People are allowed to celebrate any way they choose, regardless of whether or not you agree with it. It’s an extension of free speech. So what if some people want to wear that scantily clad doctor/nurse costume? They just want to be a little flirty for one night without being labeled a floozy for the rest of their lives. So what if the neighbor kids wants to dress up as devils and demons? They’re little kids getting candy, not Satanists drawing pentagrams with blood in their playrooms.

Being offended doesn’t make you right. There might be parts of Halloween you disagree with, and that’s okay. It just doesn’t give you the authority to decide your version is the one true way to celebrate Halloween, and it definitely doesn’t give you the right to actively interfere with how other people want to celebrate.

Halloween is subjective. People are going to pick and choose what parts of the holiday they enjoy. Maybe it’s commercialized and kid-friendly, or bizarre and bordering on the occult. That doesn’t matter: it’s their choice, not yours. You can have your fun, just let them have theirs.