Adults: Halloween is Not For You

Halloween is a good holiday for children. I will rephrase: Halloween is an amazing holiday for children. Candy is the currency of childhood, and Halloween is the ultimate kiddy ATM. For an hour or two each year, all that is required of children to amass untold wealth is a costume and decent aerobic conditioning. At the end of the evening, pillow cases stuffed with fun-sized Twix bars and Snickers and Mr. Goodbars, the horse trading begins. Your Reeses for two Smarties. My candy corn for your Milky Way. The weeks that follow are about the hoarding/hiding of one’s stash until Christmas, when more treats are expected. Halloween teaches kids all kinds of valuable consumerist lessons about the importance of greed.  It’s fantastic. For CHILDREN.

Stop.

When I was a kid, adults didn’t really dress up for Halloween. Maybe some smart-alecky teacher would throw on a witch’s hat but it wasn’t a thing. Now it’s a thing. And, frankly, it’s annoying. Every red-blooded American at every age is now expected put on some ridiculous costume and ‘Gram the hell out of that shit or else you’re “no fun.” Let me state clearly for the record: I am no fun.

I do not dress up for Halloween because I am a grown man. I’m not throwing on a Wonder Woman outfit. Nor am I going as some random Internet meme that nobody is going to understand because I derive no joy from explaining myself over and over. “Don’t you get it? I’m the pug from that one episode of ‘Rick and Morty’”! Adults, what are you doing? Stop.

When I say “adults,” I am specifically referring to people over 30. I can excuse young adults in their 20’s from celebrating because, really, they have so little. The world is slowly breaking them. I do not begrudge their last hoorah. All they’re trying to do is get drunk and fuck.

Girl, I respect your slutty Strawberry Shortcake costume and all that it implies.

But by the time one reaches 30, the game is up. Your costume looks dumb. You look tired. If you want to dress up, wear something comfortable. Go as a Snuggy. Or better yet, don’t go at all. Stay home on Halloween and tend to your neighborhood trick-or-treaters. Get the good candy. Give more than one piece. If some high school kid in his JV soccer uniform wants a Snickers bar, just give him the damned Snickers bar without any dirty looks or comments about how he didn’t put a lot of effort into his costume. Just shut up and make the kid happy. He probably doesn’t exactly know why he’s still trick-or-treating either. He just is. Because adulthood is coming fast and he’s terrified.

Please. Stop.

Maybe your own adulthood has you similarly befuddled. Maybe Halloween is your night of escape. On this one night, you can be anyone. Anything. You can be the Hulk or She-Hulk or Slutty Hulk or any kind of Hulk at all! (You don’t have to do a Hulk-related costume at all if you do not wish.) If that’s why you dress up on Halloween as an adult, you have my sympathy. But stop. Get some therapy. Reorient your priorities. Do some damned thing. Because at about 10:00pm when the green make-up is running and you’re freezing because it’s forty degrees out and you’re wearing ripped purple shorts with no shirt and the booze is starting to wear off and you’re looking around wondering how you ended up puking in this alleyway, just remember that I warned you and that I wanted better for you.

For the love of God, just stop.

Adults, this is not your night. I understand: you’re very clever and you want people to know. You spent several hundred dollars putting together your “Kidz Boppenheimer” costume and even though nobody understood what the hell you were supposed to be on sight, when you explained it, everybody acted suitably impressed. It’s a powerful high, I know, when somebody applauds your “Zombie Joan Didion” outfit.   But it’s not worth it. It’s not worth the discomfort, the repeated explanations, the false admiration you have to express for everybody else’s “hilarious” costume.

Suppress the need to throw a Halloween party for your creepy adult friends. If you must celebrate, at least wear comfortable footwear. You don’t want to be drunk at the local watering hole struggling with a disintegrating costume and sore feet. If I sound cantankerous on this subject, I am not. Or, at least, I am less cantankerous than I might otherwise appear. I’m just providing a service, the way Judge Judy might - speaking uncomfortable truths to people who may not be ready to hear them. Come to think of it, Judge Judy would make a pretty good Halloween costume.