Ah, Halloween. A time for frights and fun. Costumes and candy, and of course, horror and hype. With the beloved holiday being right around the corner, I find myself in a very special position. As I've gotten older, I've found my love for Halloween to wane on me.
I've always found it a little peculiar that my friends' fervor for Halloween has grown with age, while I seem to be more indifferent to it. Their townhouses and dorm rooms are decorated completely, whereas my townhouse doesn't have anything up to celebrate; not even a small pumpkin. Recently, I haven't been able to get into the Halloween spirit. I started to look back to when I was elementary school and two factors that came into play with that: schoolwork or whether or not Halloween fell on a weekday or the weekend. In elementary school, I found that I was more in love with the spirit of the holiday. I would watch the holiday shows and enjoy that my teachers were more easy with assignments and allowed us to enjoy it. Like an extension on an assignment, I took advantage of it. As I've made progress in school, I was focused on my work and wanted to take the free time I had after handling my work.
Whenever Halloween fell on the weekend, I was more likely to enjoy the holiday more. Mondays tend to throw a lot of people I grew up with off, seeing that the holiday came when going back to school after the weekend, but Thursdays seemed to throw a bit of a curve ball for me. Since I considered it to be a holiday, I sometimes forgot that there was at least one more day until the weekend.
When I look around and see the decorations and hear my friends talk about what they'll dress up as, I contemplate joining in, but I never do. There's something about this holiday that I don't jump in feet first into. Instead of carving a pumpkin this year or putting up any over festive decorations, I will be tending my cactus. As my friends get their costumes ready, I will contemplate one for the future. And while I have kept candy ready for any potential trick-or-treaters, it will be more likely that the one person getting that candy is me when I pick out of the bowl the same way I would snag a snack at a party. And maybe watch something Halloween-related if I find something that I get hooked on. I may not be hooked on the holiday, but I am by no means the Halloween equivalence of Ebenezer Scrooge.
