Comfort in the Ghoulish

Listening to the radio this morning I heard was a piece about how much the spending is up on Halloween merchandise this year. Talking to candy and costume vendors the commentator implied people motivated by a scary economic future are spending a little more on costumes and candy.

Possible rationales were twofold, the first being that giving better candy was a more affordable extravagance that excessive gift giving at this coming Christmas. In other words you can feel like you are being nicer to people by giving a bigger candy bar because it is only nominally more expensive especially than those mini Snickers bites when most people will be getting less from you this holiday season. The second postulated reason for the focus on this fall celebration was that people need a break from all the grim news. Putting on a costume and being somebody else allows us to shed our skins if only for a moment, skins filled with concerns and trepidations about the future.

Me personally, I am not sure of the reason but Halloween does seem to be more intensely celebrated this year than in the past few years. On the bus into work today there were a number of college students in costume. The Joker is a big one in these parts. It was a great movie and the whole live large/die young thing is soooo attractive to early twenty-somethings. Goth is always big around the campuses as are slut and beast. I have seen several parochial school girl gone wrong costumes in the past two days. (All day yesterday ghouls in bright garish costumes floated about the area near city hall.) Creatures of unknown origins with tentacles and suckers and many eyes also abound.

Hey I even went to a Halloween party, something I haven’t done in about a decade and a half. Again I found people really pushing to make the event fun. Some of the costumes were just wonderful and they are posted above. Some are clearly way, way over the top. No matter the reason people seem to want to have some fun right now, right here. All I can say is what’s the harm and “Boo”. If it makes you feel better give out the bigger candy bars, you’ll be a god among the pre-teen set.