My First Halloween
We don’t really celebrate Halloween in Australia, do we? Television networks celebrate it. They have to because all their American shows are suddenly doing Halloween specials and so they make black and orange promos and dredge up those old Stephen King tapes to make it look like it’s happening on purpose.
Maybe young people in Australia celebrate it too because it is an excuse to dress slutty. I do not know any people who want to be slutty so I have never attended such parties.
So my first Halloween was utterly underwhelming. I did not wear a costume because I do not know the cultural appropriateness of wearing one to work nor do I have a costume. As it turns out, it is very appropriate (as long as it is not slutty or gory). The corollary to this is that I have not been invited to any Halloween parties. Thus, there is no pressure to learn this American custom beyond what I’ve seen on re-runs of Friends.
At the end of the day, it’s a holiday for the children. For one thing, while Halloween has religious roots, it is not a religious holiday because pagans smell funny. It’s not a holiday that preaches any particular morals. It’s really just an excuse for children to delight in candy and adults to delight in gore and wearing revealing dresses in the midst of Fall.
The children are great. People brought their kids into work and everyone had a little candy stash outside their office and there was a lot of “happy Halloween” and “thank you” and “I’m a turtle!!!”. There were a few teenagers there and the cynical teenager in me just wanted to shake them. You guys are full grown teenagers now! You should have mastered how to say “pfft”, “meh” and “whatever”. You should be able to roll your eyes in your sleep. Yet you willingly follow your parents into work, dressed as some ridiculous mockery of a copyrighted character and beg for cheap, surplus candy! You are too old to be a cute kid anymore, you should be hating the world.