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It is great to be writing this blog on Halloween (or Halloween eve), because it gives me a platform to wax nostalgic about a holiday that I love. A couple years ago, I wrote my Ode to Halloween, offering my top Halloween takeaways (or traumas, as the case may be) that stick with me to this day. Given that we have that rare pleasure of a Saturday Halloween tomorrow, I thought that this would be a great time to sing the praises of everyone’s strange secular holiday celebrating costumes and candy. Here are a few of my observations for the holiday this year:

1. Halloween is about community. When you think about it, most of our other big holidays are all about spending time with family, while Halloween traditions are uniquely focused on going out into the community. Not only are we compelled to go out into the community, but we actually have to knock on our neighbors’ doors and beg for food! I think back to when my kids were little and we lived in a neighborhood, and Halloween was the one time of year when I got to actually meet neighbors that I had never met, or speak with neighbors that I knew, but rarely got an opportunity to speak with. It was also always great to see the creativity of my neighbors, as they littered their yards with extreme Halloween decorations and smoke machines! In a world where we are perpetually turning inward or facing a screen, Halloween is a great time to get out there and see people in real life.

2. Halloween is about sharing. The tradition of trick-or-treating is a great demonstration of a dying art (in my opinion): hospitality. I perceive the practice of trick-or-treating as a sort of Kabuki theater representation of the notion that it is right to be hospitable to a stranger that has come to your home, even if that person is dressed as Dracula, Spiderman or a Minion. Obviously, not everyone buys into this concept, so you inevitably have the dark porches and the occasional unattended bowl of candy, but it is really nice to think that so many still do welcome the onslaught! Overall, I think it is a nice lesson to teach to our kids that there is still a place in this world for hospitality (within reason, of course).

3. Halloween is about veiled threats. Underpinning the whole trick-or-treat tradition is the notion that if you do not give me treat, I am going to inflict some sort of property damage on your residence. At first glance, that seems like an odd thing to tell our kids to do, given that most people would not seem to want to encourage their children to go out into the world and make Mafia-style extortion threats to their neighbors. But, it is all in good fun, and thankfully the property damage part of the holiday does not seem to be as much of thing in these modern times. All that said, I do appreciate a good veiled threat once in a while to keep everybody in line, so in my opinion “trick or treat” is something we should stick with!

4. Halloween is about the freedom of anonymity. The costume part of Halloween is unique among our major holidays. It is the one time of year (unless you are frequently invited to costume parties) to express one’s individuality and to enjoy the freedom of anonymity afforded by wearing a mask. The resulting anonymity can reduce our inhibitions and free us up to be more social, which usually is not a bad thing! My only warning is to choose your costume carefully – it isn’t worth offending someone when the whole point of the holiday is to have fun.

5. Halloween is about pumpkins. This year I was thinking of changing my name to David S. Pumpkins, because for the first time in my life I grew a bumper crop of pumpkins. Actually, I had nothing to do with growing the pumpkins, because they actually grew as “volunteers” from seeds in my compost pile. But after years of carefully planting pumpkin seeds in my garden and waiting all summer to be rewarded with one tiny misshapen pumpkin, this year I harvested a dozen beautiful pumpkins from a random vine that came to life entirely on its own. I will still mark that one down in the “Win” column.

Happy Halloween!

– Dave Lynn