1. I may be too old to trick-or-treat and old enough to buy my own, but seriously? Free candy gets the #1 spot. Who
doesn't love a holiday where small children are randomly given candy for being out late at night threatening their elders? A+
2.It's a time when the whole community collectively expresses an interest in the fantastic and the macabre, and such an interest isn't stigmatized. It's fun to suddenly be in the majority.
3.It's, ironically enough, one of the times I most enjoy being an American, with its focus on traditional American folklore, myths, and customs, without the baggage of violence or persecution of native peoples that attend the fourth of july and thanksgiving.
4.It provides an opportunity to practice traditional crafts, like sewing for costumes or cooking pumpkin pies or scarecrow-making, which usually get ignored in our society.
5.Costumes. Allowing people to try on a different persona and act outside their usual social boundaries without facing trouble or negative assessments because of it. Adults could stand to play a little more.
6.Costumes. Encouraging a little more sex-positivism (which gods know our country could use) without alienating those who don't feel comfortable/don't want to engage in that kind of celebration.
7. I love that we have a holiday that revolves around admitting to, facing, and overcoming the things that scare you. We, as americans, do enough head-in-the-sand-ing. Halloween teaches children and reminds adults to be brave- not by pretending we're not scared or whatever we're afraid of isn't there, but by facing it, accepting it, and moving past it.
8. It evokes a sense of the wider community that no other holiday manages. Because Halloween isn't just celebrated with your friends or your family or whatever, it actively involves everyone in the neighborhood/town through trick-or-treating and parades and what-not, it helps build bonds between people who might not otherwise have any reason to ever interact. In a society that's rapidly fragmenting into smaller and smaller units the way ours is? That's beyond price.
9. People decorate almost as much for Halloween as they do for Christmas. Don't tell me you don't love seeing otherwise perfectly respectable neighbors putting up spiderwebs and witches and tombstones and stuff up in their yards. These are the same dudes who look at you funny when you haven't cut the grass in a few weeks the whole rest of the year and suddenly they want their house to look like Freddy Kruger's. That's hilarious, I'm sorry.
10.
Pumpkin is delicious. Why do you guys like halloween?
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