Halloween For Kids Vs. Halloween For Twentysomethings

The meaning of holidays change as you get older. New Year’s Eve used to be about staying up till midnight with your parents, drinking Martinelli’s and watching the ball drop. Today it’s about getting drunk at a party and hopefully not getting blue balls later from someone you’re kissing at midnight. Christmas used to be about the presents and getting a gift card to Best Buy so you could get a video game. Today it’s about praying your parents will give you money to pay your rent and sneaking into their medicine cabinet in order to get through Halloween. Easter used to be about decorating eggs and searching for your Easter basket in the backyard. Now it’s about… what exactly? What is Easter like for twentysomethings? #NotClearOn

Halloween is the holiday that has changed the most though. It makes sense, considering it’s the holiday with the most adult themes. Sin! Sex! Murder! Halloween didn’t stand a chance with twentysomethings. It was made to be perverted and freaky. Today, just going trick-or-treating sounds ridiculously twee. “Oh my god, let’s get candy and stay up all night getting a sugar high and watching scary movies!” For people in their twenties, a sugar high doesn’t quite cut it anymore. For anyone staying home tonight and watching horror films, I’m sure it’s done for novelty purposes or out of some desire to reclaim your childhood innocence because, in case you haven’t noticed, Halloween is more about the tricks than the treats these days.

On Getting A Costume

Kids: They want to be scary, not sexy. As a young boy, I was the killer from the Scream movies and a vampire four years in a row. You really want a costume that will transform you. You want people to be unable to recognize you and be frightened at the mere sight of your face. This changes. Oh boy, does it change…

Twentysomethings: We all know what dressing up on Halloween means for twentysomethings. Thank god for Mean Girls/Tina Fey for being the first to make the astute social observation about Halloween being an excuse for people to dress like whores. Have we ever viewed Halloween the same since? Have we accepted “Slutty Mouse” as an actual costume? No. People make things up in order to dress scandalously. They become slutty STDs, slutty Amish people, whatever. Lack of clothing aside, I actually prefer a twentysomething’s interpretation of Halloween over a child’s. The costumes are more clever and gaudy. There’s more creativity. When you’re ten years old, you just buy a costume that looks spooky and have your mom put it together for you. Not chic.

On Social Gatherings

Kids: Your school usually throws you a Halloween party. You eat candy all day, get blindfolded and put your hands in cold spaghetti while the teacher puts on a movie and falls asleep at their desk. When you get home, you immediately get ready to go trick-or-treating because it starts so early! When I went, I remember thinking it felt so late but it’s really not. Kids start going out at, like, 6:30 in suburbia. The sun isn’t even down and they’re already knocking on their neighbor’s doors. It’s weird. You might go with a friend or you might not. My dad always accompanied me and he would take me home usually around 8. I then would eat five pounds of candy, want to puke, and stay up till two in the morning cracked out of my mind from all the sugar.

Twentysomethings: You start pre-gaming around ten and spend a few hours getting ready, which involves sucking in your stomach so you can fit in your costume and listening to a playlist called “HALLOWEENER.” Maybe you’ll have the movie Halloween playing in the background on mute for authenticity. Anxious texts will be exchanged with your friends: “OMG, I look fat in my costume. What are you being again? How are you getting there? Should we all take a cab? I wanna sleep with someone who’s dressed as a Jersey Shore cast member. Is that weird?” When you’re ready to go, you take a long hard look at yourself in the mirror and think to yourself, “You know what’s even scarier than my costume? Me wasted at four a.m. while wearing it.”

You go to a house party and have trouble recognizing anyone. You end up drinking a lot of whiskey and hooking up with someone who’s dressed as a sumo wrestler. Not exactly a Jersey Shore cast member but you figure that it’s getting late and you aren’t sleeping alone tonight so W-H-A-T-E-V-E-R.

On The Morning After

Kids: You wake up with a sugar hangover and hate your life. You bite the hair of the dog that bit you by eating a Tootsie Roll for breakfast. At school, you trade candy with your classmates and clean up nicely. Candy is like gold for children. Don’t they know a giant bag of candy bars is only like four dollars at the store? No. They don’t. Kids think everything costs 10,000 dollars.

Twentysomethings: You vomited on the sumo wrestler during sex. FML. The next day is a haze. You decide that Halloween is, like a lot of things in your life, stressful and not a lot of fun ultimately. You promise yourself that you’ll stay in next year and eat candy and watch scary movies. This won’t happen though. This will never happen.