The sun hangs low over the horizon, casting an eerie shade of orange-yellow over the landscape, projecting the shadows of trees, cars, houses, statues, and people dressed in every kind of garb imaginable. Some wear robes with staffs, and glue beards on their faces, scratching with every smile and laugh. Others are characterized with intricate face and body paint, forcing the skin underneath to beg for air with each shimmering motion of the body. And yet, others conceal identities behind grotesque masks, oozing with fake blood and gnarled skin, terrifying younger trick-or-treaters into spells of shrieks as they huddle together seeking protection. However, the most intricate, startling, and risqué costumes (to say the least) are often found on college campuses scrawled across the nation. The absence of parental guidance seems to drop inhibitions and with a little (or a lot) of liquid courage, women often celebrate Halloween with a passionate display of their finely toned and carved bodies, adopting the stance “less is more.” But let’s not forget, there is a large population of men who shed their normal attire of pants and polo shirts and strip down to a pair of undies and a bra, with their girlfriends’ makeup poured onto their faces, rather than carefully applied, and itchy wigs as the cherry on top of their cross-dressed cake.
All Hallows’ Eve, nicknamed Halloween, started in the ancient Celtic festival known as Samhain (pronounced sah-win) as a celebration of the end of the harvest season—the greater the crop, the greater the celebration. The ancient Gaels believed that on October 31st, the portal between the worlds of the living and the dead overlapped for one night, allowing evil spirits of the deceased to run rampant across the globe, wreaking havoc and destroying the crops the townsfolk labored over all summer.
In an attempt to confuse the evil spirits, and in some cases appease their tempered souls, the Gaels dressed up in the most frightening costumes they could conceive in the hopes of deflecting the haunted ways of the dead. How ironic that a Halloween costume’s original intent was to detract unwanted attention. Today, it seems our thigh-high black leather boots and skimpy police officer outfits demand the attention of others, whether wanted or not.
We understand where our costumes evolved from, but the delicious treats accompanying the ghoulish disciples began in the Middle Ages and carries its origin from the practice of “souling,” where poor people traveled from door to door, begging for food in exchange for prayers of well-being and long lives. On college campuses, the “treating” aspect is an art form practically lost from the tradition of Halloween. Inherent to looking our absolute best, dropping those final few pounds demands we turn an eye away from the candy section, and pulls us towards a few extra miles on the treadmill. But “treating” can be recovered…in the form of beverages, warming the soul and brightening the mood.
As we become willing to flaunt the curves we’ve powered through exhaustion to achieve, it’s only right we demand the utmost attention with our costumes. Halloween is the one night (or whole weekend) of the year that we can wear whatever we want, however we want, as transparent as possible, and not receive ridicule from society- who would normally tear us down for our promiscuous ways. In essence, Halloween is not just an excuse to wear what we want, but to make our ancestors- the originators of Halloween, proud. It’s a necessity that we do them right and light our campus up with flesh revealing ensembles and heartfelt acts of kindness, generously “treating” our friends to a night of wondrous entertainment and little memory of the fleeting moments.