Halloween? More like Halloshit

Why is Halloween so shit?

Because of its high level of commercialisation? Because it has the potential to be great but falls short under the weight of extreme Americanisation?

Because it’s blatantly a festival for paedophiles?

Or maybe, it just is. Shit, that is. Perhaps disappointment has just become an intrinsic part of Halloween for so many of us that we can’t really fail to see it as anything else. After all, whose parents really did let them go out trick or treating? I know mine didn’t.

Did you ever do this? Thought not.

Which raises the question: if Halloween isn’t for children then who is it for?

Perhaps it’s for us. As we step into adulthood, we can finally relive those childhood memories we didn’t quite manage to accumulate the first time. Of course, the costumes have become both more imaginative and more revealing (for the boys just as much as for the girls) and sweets have been replaced by copious amounts of alcohol… so what’s not to like?

How about pumpkins, pumpkin carving, pumpkin soup, anything to do with pumpkins? They taste disgusting, they smell disgusting and (when mauled by even the most enthusiastic pumpkin carvers) look pretty disgusting too. Pumpkins are essentially the turkey of Halloween; no one cares about them for the rest of the year.

What a bloody waste

This does raise some pretty pressing ethical issues: Halloween is by nature a wasteful festival. People buy too much junk, they egg each other’s houses (apparently), they carve pumpkins and (understandably) throw away the flesh.

We buy or make a costume and we wear it once. In an age of global warming, Ebola, Isis, Putin, starvation and burgeoning oil shortages, can we honestly allow ourselves to do this in the name of fun?

Halloween isn’t fun, think of the personal cost…

Just think. There is this in the world.

At least when it’s Christmas we can find comfort in the fact that this usually encompasses Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Boxing Day, New Year’s Eve and New Year’s day.

Halloween, on the other hand, is literally just one day – and, if we’re to be completely honest, it’s more like just one evening.

So I ask you: what is the point?

Most of you will say to have fun of course. Only we’re forgetting something: this is Cambridge, and you’re too busy to have guilt-free fun.

Happy Halloween!