I, however, I really could do without it
October 2025
This is my partner and my best friend’s favorite holiday.
I, however, I really could do without it.
(My first choice of holidays to stop would be April Fool’s Day. Then it would be Halloween in a close tie along with St. Patrick’s Day.)
I have no problem with the trick or treating, the dressing up, the candy, the decoration (except for the pre-bought spider webs, that I just don’t understand). I’m game for everything food related because it is fun and because well, food.
It is always the obligation of the holiday that gets me (this one and all of them).
Whether I want to celebrate it or not (and it’s usually not), I am forced to partake in something I do not enjoy, cannot understand and burns me out. At the same time, one cannot just skip a holiday without insane amounts of questions and pressure. So many times it is easier to nod to the holiday, hoping everyone will just leave you alone and make the incorrect but seemingly obvious assumption that you are a buzzkill.
I am a buzzkill. I get that. But I am only a buzzkill because I am forced to do things that suck me dry and make me a shell of a person. I think the whole world is a buzzkill about what I find fun, entertaining, interesting and enjoyable. I accept that and I just try not to interact with it, that’s the difference.
I am happy to be quietly, over here, alone, just doing my thing while everyone else runs around outside having a ball doing their own thing. They have their fun. I have my book and quiet time. I’m having a great time and I’m not bothering them. So I’m not sure why others feel the need to harangue me about my choices. I’m not out there yelling at them about the health risks of candy or wearing/putting stuff on your face likely to cause cancer (at least when I was younger) and the risk to stress and cortisol levels of being scared. I’m just here ignoring you. And for some reason, that seems to make it worse.
So to general Autumnal vibes – yes please, sure. I like pumpkins, jack o’lanterns carved with fun faces, a bat here, a witch there, maybe some spiders (real because I can’t care enough to keep cleaning off my porch, so it gives me less to do and it’s an automatic buy-in.) And of course the colors and the visions they make, oranges, reds, yellows, blacks and browns, yes.
But scary, gory and violent for scary, gory, violent sake – there is no need. And if there was a need before (I never saw it) I know there isn’t now. I don’t see the need for the reminder that life isn’t as pretty and fun as we want it to be – it’s around us every day.
I think as usual, it’s all about intention. A lot of times the “It’s a holiday!” goes a bit too far because we are all walking around unconscious trying to grab the next big thing to keep us from noticing what is really going on around us.
I’ve been asked over the years “Don’t you like to dress up?”
“Like who?”
“Like someone else?”
“Why would I want to spend more time being someone I’m not on my off hours? Don’t I do that enough?”
I wonder if these people don’t have to lie about who they are every second of the day. And how do they do that? How do they keep their jobs, their relationships intact?
What is with this focus on make-believe when we do that all the time? Don’t you want a break from being someone else? Don’t you just want to be yourself?
Even as a kid, I wasn’t as into it. And as a teenager, it became more and more stressful to me.
If anything, I just wanted to wear the dress.
If I could find said dress, I would wear it, but not as someone else. I went as myself, wearing the dress. Because that’s who I am.
I think it’s the intent to deceive, create havoc and mischief that I dislike the most about the holiday. Not everyone is into it (it’s not a masquerade ball where I’ve accepted an invitation and the premise.) There is an obligation to enjoy forced deception and chaos in what is already a deceptive and chaotic world. To me that doesn’t bring lightness and frivolity.
It just feels like more work. On a holiday I already don’t really like. Plus you have to socialize.
Where are my fall and winter holidays that embrace the turning in and the introspection that this season calls for and we all so desperately need?
I’ll be working on creating them more this fall. And I’ll let you know how it goes.