Quite literally nothing is more vexing than seeing skeleton decorations at Walmart in August. You’re attempting to cherish the feeling of summer when being shoved into an entirely different portion of the year. The constant push for holidays that won’t even occur for months and months ahead is suffocating and diminishes the excitement of these special days. 

There’s a reason Halloween is called “All Hallow’s Eve”, it’s only supposed to take place once a year. Halloween is a single night each year where people can dress up as all the things they secretly wish they could wear in broad daylight and not be judged for it. If we were to wear Playboy Bunny costumes anywhere all the time, the harmonious balance our society has created of judgment and freedom may tip over and break.

Specifically, teenagers have begun dressing up and going to parties each weekend of October. I’m not here to ruin anyone’s fun by any means; I can see the appeal of this approach to Halloween, but it just seems incredibly unrealistic. Obviously, people would want to maximize their fun, but the truth is everything is good in moderation. Moderation is not drinking twice a week, purchasing five costly costumes, and pausing your entire life to plan for a continuous month-long event. And if you’re over the age of eighteen and doing this, I would highly question your current employment status.

In the least buzzkill way possible, this month-long system just seems like another event people use as an excuse to get grotesquely intoxicated at football games or concerts. No one’s testing the event-goers genuine interest in the football team or band. However, their lack of sobriety proves they’re not there to actually enjoy what the function is intended for. I know, parties are meant for drinking, but too many in the same month to celebrate the entirety of the spooky season is running it into the ground.

We’ve already allowed holidays to become such commercialized consumerist spectacles that the true essence of them have been stripped away. They’ve been sold as month-long festivities for a while now, but now we’re feeding into it.  The basis of a holiday’s novelty is that it happens only once a year, not thirty-one times. So, I’m going to continue dressing up once a year for one Halloween party and hope that people don’t continue to ruin the best holiday.