The Good News Is Halloween Is Canceled
This year’s Halloween is a very special, very spooky edition of the classic American holiday: If you go to a crowded party full of zombies and witches and Sexy Lysol Wipes, someone could actually get very, very sick. Look around the room and wonder—how close are you to patient zero? Now you’re really in spooky season!
The U.S. broke a record this week for highest number of weekly COVID cases yet. The CDC encouraged Americans to “plan alternate ways to participate in Halloween,” noting that “indoors and outdoors, you are more likely to get or spread COVID-19 when you are in close contact with others for a long time.” Dozens of cities and towns have canceled their Halloween events, and public officials in some places have discouraged trick-or-treating. Even Salem, Massachusetts, has made the hard financial decision to ask tourists not to visit the historic town on October 31.
Halloween is canceled this year. And it's going to be awesome.
I don’t like Halloween even in nonplague times. I want to want to pose in front of a pumpkin, fake blood running over my lips, but I just can't get in the spirit. I wish I could be a part of the Hot Girl Halloween culture that has evolved from Mean Girls–sanctioned cat-ears-as-costume to a chance to aestheticize yourself in ways that aren’t as influenced by the patriarchy. Halloween clearly brings people a lot of joy and satisfaction, and I’m sad for those people that they might not get to experience it in the same way this year. But I’m also excited for people to discover the true joys of Halloween, as I like to celebrate it—staying in your house, eating candy, and liking pictures of people’s dogs and babies on social media.
Experts tell us that one reason Halloween is a draw for so many adults is that experiencing the feeling of fear in a controlled simulation is fun and relaxing for some people. I wish those people well. But when I see a skeleton dangling in front of someone’s kitchen windows, I just think, Whose body was that? Why has their flesh-eaten carcass been hung in front of a house?
I don’t think death is sacred or bad to joke about. I just don’t think it’s a good time. (Seriously, how is it that the same people who love to cry about Shonda Rhimes plotlines and the old couple on the Titanic also turn their front yards into baby-sized graveyards once a year?) Life is an experience of constant, low-level fear that sometimes erupts into geyser-like spikes of terror. Plastic eyeballs and bats only underscore how bad we are at actually countenancing life's gruesome little tricks.
Do you know what’s scary? When you’ve been in a single-stall public bathroom for a long time and you can hear the people in the line outside practically starting to unionize, saying, “What can be taking her so long” and “Is she still in there?” and “I’m gonna to knock again.” If you want to feel your heart to lurch in fear, don’t pay to see a horror movie—just wave back to someone who’s waving at you and then realize they are not waving at you. In high school I once went to a haunted house where clowns chased visitors with chainsaws. It was less scary than having to make small talk in a long car ride with an acquaintance.
Maybe it’s because I’m Jewish. A big part of Judaism is thinking of death as something to be feared and avoided. My family devotes a huge amount of time to talking about death, pain, and what terrible things might happen in the future. What “Scary Halloween Lewks” YouTube tutorial can measure up to the reality that either you will be at your parent’s funeral or your parent will be at your funeral?
She gets it.
In Judaism when someone does die, you’re supposed to tear up your clothes, lie on the floor, and cover up your mirrors. That’s metal! Lots of other religions and cultures have intense death rituals—some offer viewings of the body, or hire professional mourners, or have the remains of the dead turned into a piece of decoration, or encourage animals to consume the bodies. That’s spooky! That’s witchy! That’s dark! No fake, lurid decorations, just pure dread.
I would like if Halloween ditched its tacky imagery and reverted to its roots. I would go all in on a night when people sit in the dark discussing their greatest fears and weeping about infinity. (Just another Saturday night in America, these days!) I would embrace such a holiday. Until then, isn’t every time you fall asleep and have a nightmare a kind of free, recurring Halloween, tailored perfectly to your greatest fears and anxieties? In quarantine and this prolonged time semi-lockdown, haven’t our brains become deluxe haunted houses from which there is no true escape during the day or night?
Halloween is canceled—so enjoy taking a year off. Light a candle. Eat an autumnal soup. Do a little craft project. Think about the fact that one day the planet will exist without you, and how that makes life beautiful and urgent and painful. Soon it will be Thanksgiving, and Christmas, and New Year’s—all holidays that focus on light and love and not what-if-the-dead-come-back-to-life-and-gorge-on-our-bodies. Since March, Americans have been thinking about death and dying with more real fear than we have in a long, long time. We deserve a little break to recharge. And next year, if you want to dip yourself head to toe in fake blood and intestines and roll through a graveyard, I will cheer you on.
Jenny Singer is a staff writer for Glamour. You can follow her on Twitter.
Originally Appeared on Glamour
