October is Halloween – a celebration that sometimes gets a bad rap.
Like many other holidays, Halloween is what we make of it and, like many people in our community, I make it fun.
To me, Halloween is more than just creepy clown movies, and costumes – it’s picking the perfect pumpkin at the Laity Pumpkin Patch with family, it’s decorating the house, getting fake cobwebs stuck to everything (including myself).
It’s talking to neighbours with whom I otherwise don’t connect with often. Halloween brings my whole neighbourhood together.
Sure, there’s candy, but Halloween candy is more than a treat– it’s goodwill. I think back to that one time my neighbours ran out of candy and everyone in the neighbourhood pitched in to share so that they could still hand some out to children who came trick-or-treating.
I recall the family of new Canadians up the street who wanted so badly to participate that they handed out food from their pantry. Later that night, my brother and I returned the food to their door and left a bag of candy as thanks.
There was the time the dog from down the street got off leash and ran into our house. I’ve watched children take candy out of their own Halloween bags and re-fill empty buckets left on porches by parents out with their own children.
Halloween candy, the bane of dentists everywhere, has taught me one of life’s greatest lessons. In the words of Charlotte Brontë: “Happiness quite unshared can scarcely be called happiness; it has no taste.”
In other words, the candy’s all the sweeter when it’s eaten with friends.
Halloween is also a great opportunity to help those in need. The Key Club at my school, Thomas Haney secondary, has been collecting non-perishable items for the Friends in Need Food Bank, a drive they’re calling “Scare for Hunger.”
The SPCA recently hosted a pumpkin carving, costume contest event and bake sale that benefited the local shelter.
Families collaborate to put together haunted houses on Halloween and the proceeds go to local charities. Some children even collect donations for UNICEF, (the United Nations Children’s Fund) in lieu of candy.
Local legends and scary stories, made up or not, are a good way to get people involved in local history. My friends and I have spent many a chilling night reflecting on the ghost “Spooku,” who lingers in our school theatre, roasting marshmallows and planning trips to find ghosts around town.
This year, I was thinking of making a trip to the Haney House Museum to hear more about local legends surrounding All Hallows Eve.
I’ve always found Halloween a good break for my mental health. The beginning of the school year can be stressful, and it’s nice to be able to take a break, shed one’s inhibitions and go to school not dressed as myself, but to disguise myself as something ridiculous, funny, or historical.
In the past, my Halloween costumes have ranged from artistic (this year I’m a raven, one year I was Elizabeth from Pride and Prejudice), to hilarious (like my Shawn the Sheep costume in the eighth grade, or the year I went as a buffalo). Each of these costumes has afforded me a brief, much needed break from today’s ever more demanding social expectations.
From goodwill in my neighbourhood, to decorating with my family, Halloween brings people together. It’s a school costume contest and a masquerade dance. It’s carefully carving an orange vegetable (how weird it that?) into the perfect jack-o’-lanterns.
Sometimes it’s about jabbing my pumpkin with a pencil a million times so the candle shines out, like stars in the night sky.
Sometimes it’s about raiding the closet and going to school dressed in all my parents old clothes, or curling up to watch It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!
Halloween can provide an opportunity to bring not only children closer to their families, but families closer to their community.
There is a magnetism about Halloween, something special that isn’t there in any other holiday. Some might say it’s the candy corn, the rockets, the black liquorice. Some might say it’s magic – opening our doors to strangers and welcoming them with a treat.
All I know, is that it’s my favourite holiday.
Marlowe Evans is a senior student at Thomas Haney secondary and head delegate of the Model UN Delegation who writes about youth issues.