In the words of my favorite Disney Channel Original Movie “Halloweentown,” “Halloween … is COOL.”
I couldn’t have said it better myself. Halloween is obviously the best holiday to ever exist, ever. You don’t have to buy presents for anyone, you don’t have to go to any boring religious services, and you get to do spooktacular things like watch Oscar-snubbed movies such as “I Know Who Killed Me,” eat fun-sized candy and play tricks on bullies.
So it was a real shame for me to discover that in college, the true meaning of Halloween has been co-opted by naughty nurses and black-cat costumes devoid of fur and fabric. It’s not about getting your freak on, it’s about getting your spook on with mummies, witches, bats and my personal biggest fear: the ghosts of children from the old-timey 1800s who died of diphtheria in attics of Victorian homes.
But fear not (or rather, fear much): the Halloween spirit can be resurrected from within, if you know where and how to work it. And I can tell you right now that it’s not on Frat Row, unless your idea of scary is taking Jell-O shots off some dude with a mullet wig and puking in your dorm bathroom.
One of the most essential ingredients to an authentic Halloween is obviously the costume. Naughty nurse is not a costume, it’s a lawsuit. Naughty Sarah Palin, however, is a great costume because it’s timely and funny but also horrifying.
During my awkward adolescent phase(s), I felt like Lindsay Lohan in “Mean Girls” when she walks into the Halloween party dressed as a nasty vampire bride in the middle of a sea of lingerie and bunny ears. I didn’t think I’d ever say this about La Lohan, but for that scene, she was my idol. I was a really odd kid, dressing up as Queen Elizabeth II, a medieval peasant afflicted by the bubonic plague, and Tippi Hedren from “The Birds,” a triumvirate rivaling that of Caesar, Pompey and Crassus ““ which also would have been good costumes for me. I miss those times when the costume was the competition for the cool crown among your friends, especially because I won every time. I miss the imagination it fostered, and now I will never be satisfied with a store-bought costume, no matter how much the economy says it needs my money.
A fond memory of my childhood was getting together with my friends and turning my front yard into a haunted house for the little kids of my neighborhood, so I was ecstatic to discover that my neighbors here in Westwood were putting together their own this past Saturday night.
I checked it out after I heard riotous children’s screams, a sound that has scarred me since I worked as a lifeguard at the city pool this summer. But my inner Halloween spirit spoke to me and told me to go, like a ghostly prophet of spooky, and I’m so glad I did. I entered the Haunted Castle (“Where no one comes out alive!”) next-door to my apartment, put together by a women’s home for high school-aged girls.
The minute I got there, a girl roughly 8 years old comes tearing out from the exit of the haunted house screeching, “I lost my shoes!” This is a great sign: Any haunted house where someone loses an article of clothing is bound to be a good one.
I linked arms with an 11-year-old girl and her friend who were getting chills up their spines and needed my protective motherly support (oh, God). We entered a Haunted Forest where little ghouls tried to jump out and grab our legs, and the screaming began along with my maternal instinct. The haunted house as a whole was pretty standard ““ lined with black trash bags, illuminated by a strobe light, and staffed by ghosts, witches et al with sinister chanting.
It wasn’t so much the actual haunted house that revived my Halloween spirit, but the enthusiasm of the kids who visited it. The gleeful screams never abated; they were having an awesome time with their unsullied imaginations.
Another way to preserve a more pure Halloween is to pull some old-fashioned tricks ““ especially if they’re on bullies. In the Halloween episode of “Freaks and Geeks” the angsty Lindsay goes out with her deadbeat bully friends to drive around wreaking havoc on pumpkins and trash cans and egging geeks, which mistakenly ends up including her little brother. I don’t think this is a very good trick for college-aged kids to pull, but I can say from experience that putting fake tarantulas in the shower/your roommate’s bed/taped to their salsa in the refrigerator is one that will add to the ambiance of crazy high jinks and scary happenings.
Looking back, our younger Halloweens were the springs of our youth, and now we are inevitably in the winter of our Halloween discontent, but it doesn’t have to be that way.
I guess people have their own
preferences about the real meaning of Halloween, but there are certain instances in which a line needs to be drawn ““ through a circle with a picture of a Playboy bunny costume in the middle of it.
If you’re deciding between going as seductive Sarah Palin or juicy Joe Biden for Halloween, then e-mail McReynolds at dmcreynolds@media.ucla.edu.