Halloween. Allhallows Eve. The eve of All Saints' Day.
As defined by Dictionary.com, Halloween is the observance by mostly children in costumes who solicit treats, often by threatening minor pranks. This is the modern definition of Halloween, but the history is quite different in the beginning.
Evolving from the ancient Celtic holiday of Samhain, modern Halloween has become less about literal ghosts and ghouls and more about costumes and candy. The Celts used the day to mark the end of harvest season and the beginning of winter, and also believed that this transition between the seasons was a bridge to the world of the dead. Over the millennia the holiday transitioned from a somber pagan ritual to a day of merriment, costumes, parades and sweet treats for children and adults. (www.history.com/topics/halloween)
In modern times today, Halloween is just a silly "holiday" that kids dress up as fairy princesses or cowboys and go to strangers' houses and beg for free candy. None of this is false, but everyone needs to get it around their heads that Halloween is not just another one of those holidays that you can just toss to the side like groundhog day or arbor day, just to make an example. It has meaning and it had a very important history. While the true nature of this time is lost to almost everyone, for some good and not so good reasons, it is not a "bad" holiday and, in my opinion, should not be thrown out the window - especially as just a holiday for kids or just a "silly holiday or even a holiday that no one outside the US hardly celebrates as much as (I personally) think that it should.
Now, with all of that ranting out of the way, let me get to what this should really be about. If you have read the title, you should understand by this point that this is about the meaning of Halloween - to me.
So, to be honest, I am finishing writing this way after I had originally planned to post this on Halloween of 2014. There are many reasons for that, many of them being the fact that I didn't have much time and I got lazy a lot of the time as well, but there was one thing that stood out from all of that besides the fact that I couldn't figure out a way to begin this until recently. On Halloween, I was not able to go Trick-or-Treating because I had to work. Now, this may seem childish because I am 20 and some may say that I shouldn't go out and Trick-or-Treat anymore, but despite not being able to do one of the many things that make Halloween special to me, it had me thinking a lot about the holiday in general and what I really think about it. Now, it is hard for me to remember exactly what I was thinking back then, but I know for the most part that what Halloween really means to me is as much about the things as it is personal.
Halloween, I think, has to do a lot with things like pumpkins, ghosts, and monsters - mostly for the reason of selling these things for decorations and props and such. As someone who considers herself apart of the Gothic Subculture, I take the opportunity of Halloween to get things to better suit my lifestyle. The people who market those Halloween goodies may not know that people like me wait the whole year for the things that they sell, but I know that it is a glorious time for all of us. Pumpkin spice everything is also what I look forward to the most, but that is just basically around autumn time (which works because I don't think that I could wait for just one day out of the year for that yummy goodness).
Halloween is also very personal to me in many ways. When I first got into the Gothic Subculture, my best friend at the time had me over at her house very close to Halloween. I was interested and curious about the subculture that she was in and wanted to know more about it and get into it myself. She taught me many things that I stay true to even today, but the reason that moment stood out to me the most was because it was in October and Halloween was just around the corner. Halloween was the first holiday that I experienced in my "new life" and it is the reason that it is my favorite holiday of all time to this day.
So, after all of this rambling that I hope made a little sense, I think that Halloween is not just a holiday (or maybe even a religious experience for some people.) It is the feelings and emotions that are connected to it. It is what you feel when you step outside and take a deep breath of autumn air. It is the spice of nutmeg and cinnamon that you taste in pumpkin spice everything. It's the trees changing color and the sharp cold of the newly changing seasons. Everything about autumn reminds me of Halloween and everything that Halloween is is what autumn is to me. Halloween means so much to me that I could never dream of it not existing.
That's what Halloween means to me.
Now, with all of that ranting out of the way, let me get to what this should really be about. If you have read the title, you should understand by this point that this is about the meaning of Halloween - to me.
So, to be honest, I am finishing writing this way after I had originally planned to post this on Halloween of 2014. There are many reasons for that, many of them being the fact that I didn't have much time and I got lazy a lot of the time as well, but there was one thing that stood out from all of that besides the fact that I couldn't figure out a way to begin this until recently. On Halloween, I was not able to go Trick-or-Treating because I had to work. Now, this may seem childish because I am 20 and some may say that I shouldn't go out and Trick-or-Treat anymore, but despite not being able to do one of the many things that make Halloween special to me, it had me thinking a lot about the holiday in general and what I really think about it. Now, it is hard for me to remember exactly what I was thinking back then, but I know for the most part that what Halloween really means to me is as much about the things as it is personal.
Halloween, I think, has to do a lot with things like pumpkins, ghosts, and monsters - mostly for the reason of selling these things for decorations and props and such. As someone who considers herself apart of the Gothic Subculture, I take the opportunity of Halloween to get things to better suit my lifestyle. The people who market those Halloween goodies may not know that people like me wait the whole year for the things that they sell, but I know that it is a glorious time for all of us. Pumpkin spice everything is also what I look forward to the most, but that is just basically around autumn time (which works because I don't think that I could wait for just one day out of the year for that yummy goodness).
Halloween is also very personal to me in many ways. When I first got into the Gothic Subculture, my best friend at the time had me over at her house very close to Halloween. I was interested and curious about the subculture that she was in and wanted to know more about it and get into it myself. She taught me many things that I stay true to even today, but the reason that moment stood out to me the most was because it was in October and Halloween was just around the corner. Halloween was the first holiday that I experienced in my "new life" and it is the reason that it is my favorite holiday of all time to this day.
So, after all of this rambling that I hope made a little sense, I think that Halloween is not just a holiday (or maybe even a religious experience for some people.) It is the feelings and emotions that are connected to it. It is what you feel when you step outside and take a deep breath of autumn air. It is the spice of nutmeg and cinnamon that you taste in pumpkin spice everything. It's the trees changing color and the sharp cold of the newly changing seasons. Everything about autumn reminds me of Halloween and everything that Halloween is is what autumn is to me. Halloween means so much to me that I could never dream of it not existing.
That's what Halloween means to me.
