Get Thee Behind Me Satan...

Because you make people nervous when I'm describing the holiday of holidays.

It's hard to even begin to describe all of the ginormous awesomeness of Halloween, the stabbiest, most spinster-y, good-time holiday. It can probably only be left to a list, a provisional one, to be added onto by Punch and Bobby.

1. Halloween has never made any sense. Other (lesser) celebration days have clear narratives, easily explained at every age. (Birth of baby Jesus; positive impact of trees; glorious, sad, but mostly glorious war.) All Hallow's Eve has a sketchy link to harvests or fall or the Old World, but the best part is no one really cares about meaning. It's basically just about fun, but the fun brought on by horrible, horrible fear and the vast and terrifying spirit world.

2. It is the one day a year when it makes total sense to wait for someone to approach you with your destiny, which you at first will not believe and deny vigorously, pointing out your normalcy, but will eventually accede that there were portents to your magical powers, though they were latent, and now you must reluctantly take up the mantle of fighting the Devil as you learn about the serious responsibility of shooting flames from your hands and also about the tenuous balance of good and evil.

3. 364 days a year, we are taught to fear: women who live alone with cats, people who look different, strangers, pirates, people who rise from the dead and can only survive by eating normal people's brains, the ushz. One day, one beautiful, beautiful day, we rejoice in them and revere them to such an extent that we dress our precious children as them, until the streets are filled with tiny spinster lesbians, dungeon & dragon enthusiasts, and sweet, sweet zombies. Until neighborhoods are teeming with miniature deviants, talking to people they don't know, clamouring to be rewarded for their queerness. And we do reward them with a bounty of food that usually comes with limits or warnings. So you see, we teach children that the archetypes and individuals we are taught to fear are worthy of emulation, are a good time, are sometimes them, and here we set the stage for later noble lessons on love and deconstruction.

stabbily yours, j