Calling all naughty nurses, Lady Gaga impersonators and Ray-Ban-wearing Tom Cruises, your holiday of choice has arrived. The freaks will hit the streets this weekend for the ancient celebration of All Hallows Eve, also known as Halloween.
Whether you choose to be politically controversial, offensive, gruesome, vulgar or just plain slutty with your costume, almost nothing is deemed unacceptable on Halloween.
Many would agree this “everything goes on Halloween” attitude springs from the need for an escape. The holiday has become a reprieve from the day to day troubles that weigh us down. It’s a 24-hour freedom from the ills of our own reality, lived out in the form of crazy costumes, silly tricks and sweet treats.
People wear masks and wigs, face paint and extensive costumes to conceal their identities. People pretend to be something they’re not for just one mysterious night a year. This was not the original purpose for the festive garb, however.
The ancient Celtic peoples in Ireland believed that all barriers between the living and the dead were broken the night before All Hallows Day, known today in the Roman Catholic Church as All Saints Day. On All Hallows Eve the Celtics would dress up ghoulishly in fear and hope the earth-dwelling spirits would leave them alone.
Today the tradition is memorialized in the mass outpouring of costume-clad children and parents into the streets in high hopes of receiving more cavity-causing candy than humanly possible to consume. For college-dwellers it means crazy costume parties and spooky drink specials with the hope of scantily costumed females.
But I’d like to challenge the concept of concealment on Halloween. Perhaps we’re not hiding our true characters behind character costumes of our choosing but rather freeing the inner character that dwells beneath the social norms forced upon us each day.
Now I’m not saying that all the individuals who dress up as Freddy Krueger or Jason Voorhees are actually murders deep inside, but rather they identify with a darker more psychologically twisted character than their work or school life permits them to expose.
For instance, last Halloween I was Pippi Longstocking. Of course, part of my decision had to do with the convenience of already possessing long red hair, freckles and stripped stockings, but I think it also was an outcry to my childhood; a subconscious need to be something child-like, care-free and silly. I grew up a lot last year, but I had one day to be my starry-eyed self again on Halloween.
I haven’t quite decided what I’ll be this year. Perhaps Spiderman, reflecting the need for a little adventure in my life or maybe the Little Mermaid, to express how deeply I miss my proximity to water as a born and raised Floridian.
What will you reveal about yourself this Halloween?
Janece Bell can be reached at
