How Is Halloween Different?
Halloween is one of my favorite holidays; however, this wasn’t always the case. When I was young, I hated Halloween. It wasn’t because I was scared of the costumes. In fact, I found those fascinating. My dislike was twofold: my lack of understanding of mental health and blurring the lines of stranger danger. I struggled with these back then because I was a child. However, as an adult, I see many adults walking that same misguided path. I was inspired to write this post, not to convince anyone to change their belief system but rather to provide some insight to others who may not face struggles. So, let’s get into it.
Halloween and Mental Health
We’ve all watched movies where the main character (likely a preteen or teenager) stumbles upon or is challenged to knock on the door/enter a “spooky” house. The house appears rundown in disrepair, shabby, and/or abandoned. However, it is inhabited by a recluse (usually an older eccentric person) who the town has deemed “weird” or “unbalanced.” The trope is that the two characters befriend each other, and the “weird” person turns out to be “normal” but has withdrawn from society.
When I was young, there was an older woman who people called a “witch,” and children were warned to stay away from her. She was a person who when children played near her home would scream at them. She rarely came outside, and no one was ever seen to visit her. Kids thought it was fun to knock on her door and run or throw rocks at her home. The most vicious rumor was that for Halloween, she made candy apples with razor blades inside and gave them to trick-or-treaters. I can’t recall ever seeing her face. That’s because I kept my distance and was not curious to know more about her. The interesting part is that she kept to herself and that people bothered her. Others were dangerous, not her.
As an adult, I came to realize the woman suffered from mental illness, most likely paranoid schizophrenia. She was afraid of people and hid away from others in her home. She didn’t have family or many people to check on her. All she seemed to want was peace, which wasn’t what some people gave her. One day, her home caught fire with her trapped inside. Some men tried to save her, but her doors were barricaded with wood from the inside. Her body was located near a back door as she tried to escape. The fire was ruled an accident but was believed to have occurred due to something being thrown in her window that knocked her curtains on the open flame of her gas stove. When she heard people outside of her door yelling for her, she likely assumed they were attempting to harm her and fled to another area of the home.
Now, I don’t know if the razor in candy apples were. I tend to think they weren’t since most kids wouldn’t treat or treat at her house. However, the fact that someone could think to do something like that scared the bee-geez out of me, and I wanted no part of it.
Halloween and Stranger Danger
Sometimes I wonder what it is with parents. The mixed message of this one still baffles me. I’m not going to say I had overprotective parents, but they did keep a watchful eye on me. From an early age, I was taught never to talk to strangers and that people who looked nice could be dangerous. I was also warned that “bad people” would lie and try to trick kids into believing they were friends of the parents or they had a hurt puppy in their car. I knew not to trust people. I was even told not to go with adults that I knew unless my parents had told me specifically to go with them. So, why on earth would my parents want me to go to strangers’ homes to beg for candy? It made no sense to me. I could get candy from the store. And why wouldn’t they keep the candy and eat it themselves? Why were they giving it away? What was wrong with it? Was it poisoned? Did it have razor blades? I refused to knock on doors because I was afraid of the people trying to give me candy.
It wasn’t until I became a teen—mainly because of my friends—that I began to discover the fun of Halloween. By then, I was too old to door-to-door, but I enjoyed passing out candy and seeing the smiling faces of the recipients. I also felt compassion for those who were forced by their parents to come. As a teen, I got into dressing up for theme parties and eating foods made to look weird (e.g., eggs made to look like eyeballs and cakes to look like dirt with worms and bugs). Cosplay became a thing. I was in college the first time I attended Rocky Horror. I ended up with a gallon of water thrown on me…in a white t-shirt, so that was a bit of poor planning on my part. But I knew I was in a safe environment.
And then, I became an adult.
I enjoyed years of Halloween bliss. But after college, I relocated for a job, and oh baby, it was the thing of Halloween nightmares. Envision the original Footloose as a reality, and all of the adult characters in the movie quadruply uptight and sanctimonious. Total Scrooges of Halloween. The holiday was branded as evil and Satanic and practically banned. Growing up this wasn’t something I’d ever heard. In fact, I’d been taught the opposite…that Halloween had originated in the eighth century from the Christian feast of All Saints Day. All Saints Day is celebrated annually on November 1. As the name suggests, it was created to celebrate and honor the saints. October 31 became known as All Hallows Eve which eventually was shortened to Halloween.
A more expansive origin explanation is that Halloween stems from a Celtic pagan festival called Samhain. This festival was to honor the dead and participants offered sacrifices of animals and crops to the pagan gods and goddesses. Furthermore, it is hypothesized that Samhain was influenced by the ancient Roman festivals called Pomona (harvest festival) and Feralia (day of the dead festival). All Saints Day was moved to November 1 to give Christians an alternative to these pagan celebrations that occurred at the end of October. Later, the Roman church designated November 2 to be All Soul Day, which honors the dead. So, if both All Soul’s Day and Halloween were created to honor/remember the dead, what’s the difference between them? And how is this different from El Día de los Muertos (Mexico), Día de los Natitas (Bolivia), O-bon (Japan), Chuseok (Korea), or Finados (Brazil)?
In the town where I had relocated, to prevent children from going trick-or-treating, trunk-or-treat was developed and/or endorsed. This is where people decorate the truck of their car and pass out candy in a church parking lot. So, instead of going house-to-house, children of car-to-car. Now, how this is different, I don’t rightly know. It’s still passing out candy to kids in costumes. Yet, it supposedly is somehow not the same. In fact, it is billed as being superior. And if the argument is Halloween is what one makes it, then how come it can never be made “good?”
That’s all I got. Was this post helpful? Do you think you’ll ever visit? Have you visited there? Let me know your thoughts in the comment section. If you like this post, please click the like button and share. Your feedback allows me to know the content that you want to read.
If Brokeback Mountain, 8 Seconds, Poltergeist, and Supernatural had an orgy, Demon Rodeo would be the lovechild.
Demon Rodeo is available now on Amazon. For video book trailers, visit my TikTok page. The full blurb is on my Instagram and Amazon.
Demon Rodeo is the first book in the Chasing the Buckle series but can be read as a standalone. It’s a friends-to-lovers romance set in the rodeo world. These are not your typical cowboys. It’s a widely diverse cast of characters and a mashup of genres that aren’t always seen together. If you’re looking for a palate cleanser, this may be a book for you.
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Until next time, happy reading and much romance. Laissez le bon temps rouler.
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Out of the Penalty Box (book #1) One minute in the box or a lifetime out. Defending the Net (book #2) Crossing the line could cost the game. Ice Gladiators (book #3) When the gloves come off, the games begin. Penalty Kill (book #4) Let the pucker begin. Future Goals (book #5) The future lies between a puck and a net.About the Author:
Hi, I’m Genevive, and I am a contemporary sports romance author. My home is in South Louisiana. If you like snark and giggles with a touch of steamy Cajun and Creole on the side, I may have your poison in my stash of books. Drop by the bayou and have a look around. The pirogues are always waiting for new visitors.
