Community Halloween

The air is crisp like the fallen, anthocyanin leaves. The sharp air frostbites the lining of the lungs, and when exhaled, the warm soul escapes in curls of white breath. The smirking pumpkins take up their sentry positions guarding each home from would-be trespassers. Tonight, children take the streets with masked dreams dripping in melted sugar.

Of the final yearly celebrated holidays in America (Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's Eve), Halloween is easily the least important. Halloween isn't a national holiday. Halloween doesn't get a day off from school. Some years, students pile into their classroom donning their freakish facades only to take a fractions quiz. Most years, kids intoxicate themselves on chocolate only to arise hungover and go to school.

And while Halloween is largely branded as a novelty, I find it one of the most generous holidays. While Christmas and Thanksgiving are based on giving and thankfulness, I find people's general spirit surrounding these two holidays is mostly confined to family and friends. There may be a day of volunteering, a food or toy drive here or there, but this is a rare occurrence for most people.

Halloween, on the other hand, unifies the community through generosity of spirit and candy. For the average American, handing out free treats to tens, even hundreds, of anonymous children is considered enjoyable normalcy. I have no evidence, but it seems that more people pass out candy at Halloween than go to soup kitchens on Christmas.

When I was growing up, my step father would spend hundreds of dollars every year on the newest and spookiest decorations for the front of our house. Coupled with the growing amorphous blob from past Halloweens in the attic, each year topped the previous. I remember one year our entire lawn was covered with black tarps serving as the morass turf of a graveyard. In conjunction with the headstones, fog machine, and strobe lights, one kid actually jumped out of his shoe when my step dad jumped out from inside a life-size coffin.

But oddly, his Christmas decorations were always modest in comparison to October 31st. My step dad chose to support and give back to our neighborhood during Halloween, not Christmas. I think he wanted to spend the most time and money on a holiday that put him in direct contact with Trick-or-Treaters rather than the purely aesthetic spectators at Christmas.

And pending a few bad apples who use this holiday for felonious mischief, Halloween seems to be about direct contact with the children and families of the community. While some, like my step dad, want to bring joy through fear, others generously open their doors allowing a puff of cozy air to warm shivering ghosts and goblins on their journey around their neighborhood. Christmas may be the time of giving, but Halloween embodies, for me, the truest sense of community.