Halloween takes on an entirely different meaning as I get older. Growing up, it was one of my least favorite holidays. I've never been a fan of dressing up in costume - I find myself uncreative due to a dearth of motivation, and I always feel stupid running around in anything half-assed. The candy was lovely, except that most of my Halloweens were spent trick-or-treating alone. While this meant I could go at an extremely fast pace and hit up a large volume of houses (several occasions saw me end the night with fully two or three grocery bags of candy), there was little joy to the process, and certainly no artistic expression. Mostly I just dressed up in black and called myself some variation of ninja or wraith.

More recent days stress the elements of costume parties mixed with copious alcohol, and it was a rather sudden realization to find myself anticipating the weekend and its associated festivities. While I continue to lack any desire for costume-wearing, I delightfully found that there are enough others in the same boat so as to eliminate any of the social awkwardness involved with being the only one not in costume. I can instead enjoy the spectacle of silliness and broken social inhibitions of those around me.

While it might be considered irresponsible or immature to embrace this sort of tradition, American culture necessarily depends on these holidays. Having no long-term traditions or rituals from our heredity or locale, we need the sanction of a holiday - however obscured from its origins or overtaken by marketing schemes - to do what humans need to do: interact. We find ourselves devoid of good excuses to get together and celebrate our existence, and the grind of the day-to-day brings us to forget that our lives are worth delighting in. Halloween is certainly a weak band-aid for a problem that runs far deeper than one holiday, or even a "holiday season" can attempt to address, but for now, it's the best that we can manage.