As I've written here before, I don't like Halloween. I'm not a big fan of horror movies or of people making themselves up to look disfigured or like rotting corpses. One time when I was in the company of Ray Bradbury at a convention, someone shambled past us looking like they just rose up from a grave and Ray said something about how people parade about like that to celebrate life by mocking death. Maybe to some folks it's a celebration of life but to me, it's just ugly.
I've also never been comfy with the idea of kids going door-to-door to take candy from strangers. Hey, what could possibly go wrong with that? I did it a few years when I was but a child, not so much because I wanted to but because it seemed to be expected of me. I felt silly in the costume and when we went to neighbors' homes and they remarked how cute we were…well, I never liked to be cute in that way. People talk to you like you're a puppy dog. The man two houses down…before he gave me my treat, I thought he was going to tell me to roll over and beg for it.
Also, I've always been a fussy eater — an extension of my many food allergies. Even before I knew I had them, I was aware that some foods made me not feel great and I tried to avoid them. I would say that a good two-thirds of the candy I hauled home on a Halloween Eve was stuff I simply didn't want to eat…and I would have gotten very sick if I had. Into the trash can it went and I felt bad about it. Some nice neighbor had paid good money for it, after all.
And some of it, of course, was candy corn — the cole slaw of sugary treats. I promised to stop bashing candy corn on this site so that's all I'll say about that.
So I didn't like the dress-up part and I didn't like the trick-or-treating part. There were guys in my class at school who invited me to go along on Halloween when they threw eggs at people and overturned folks' trash cans and redecorated homes with toilet paper…and I never much liked pranks. One year the day after Thanksgiving, two friends of mine were laughing and bragging how they'd trashed some old lady's yard and I thought, "That's not funny. It's just being an a-hole."
I'm not writing this to try to change your mind about a holiday you might love. If you do, great. As long as you stay off my property, knock yourself out. But over the years, as I've told friends how I feel, I've been amazed how many agree with me. In a world where people now feel more free to say that which does not seem "politically correct," I feel less afraid to own up to my dislike of Halloween. About the only thing I ever liked about it was the second-best Charlie Brown special.
So that's why I'm home tonight and not up in West Hollywood wearing my Kim Davis costume. I'm fine with every other holiday. Just not this one. I do not believe there is a War on Christmas in this country. That's just something the Fox News folks dreamed up because they believe their audience needs to be kept in a perpetual state of outrage about something. But if there's ever a War on Halloween, I'm enlisting. And bringing the eggs.