There is nothing ‘cute’ and nothing amusing about a decapitated ghoul with innards spilling out strewn across front lawn of my neighbors yard. Call me a stickler. C’mon, can’t you enjoy a little holiday spirit? Where’s your seasonal cheer? I respond curtly that my seasonal cheer is in no way enhanced by toilet paper strangling my trees and obnoxious little kids dressed up as Michelle Obama (the bloody, dead version of Michelle Obama, that is, and no, this article has no covert political agenda) knocking on my door demanding a Twizzler that they do not need and I have no benevolent, nurturing inclination to give them.

My tone may be subtle, so let me spell it out for you: I hate Halloween. Now to validate my old-man-in-bush-with-hose position: I hate Halloween because of its perverse, morose undertone and messages, its glorification of death and gore for no other reason but its entertainment and sales value, and for the excuse it has readily provided to both children and adults to act in a manner more horrifying than the taste level of their costumes.

I’m living in New York. I expect to see the unexpected. But, as I recall (please correct me if I’m wrong), no prostitution laws in this country have been repealed in the name of October ‘holiday spirit.’ Why a full-grown woman feels it okay to walk around in this inclement weather dressed as a Playboy bunny, I have no idea. Why a teenage girl feels the same behavior equally justified, I find significantly more disturbing.

Halloween is not the only day in the year set aside to pardon self-destructive behavior (I need only wish you all a premature Happy New Year—not apples and honey style). Halloween, however, is uniquely used not only to excuse self-destructive behavior, but communally-destructive behavior. The night before Halloween, October 30th, is known colloquially as ‘mischief night’ (also known as Devil’s night or hell night). On this epic eve, teens and pre-teens and pre-pre-teens get together to vandalize and trespass on the property of others. Practices include, but are not limited to, rubbing soap on car windows, throwing eggs at houses (and eggs are very difficult to get off windows; I speak, unfortunately, from personal experience), adorning trees with toilet paper, throwing rotten fruit at cars, buses, or human targets (especially prominent in Queens, New York—shout out), setting garbage aflame and dancingly in a wild frenzy around the conflagration, reciting malevolent spells and incantations and consorting with the devil (okay, I expanded a bit upon the truth for this one, but they do light trash on fire). In the mid-1980’s, the mischief night festivities escalated to vandalizing and setting fire to graveyards, and in the 1990’s, 180 bona fide arsons were committed in New Jersey. Happy holiday.

Dare we explore the murky origins of this ignominious festivity? The roots of Halloween date back to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain. The Celts, the 2000 inhabitants of what is now Ireland, the UK, and northern France, ushered in the New year and winter with huge, sacred bonfires, attributed to the Celtic deities, in the hopes of warding off harmful ghosts of the deceased who were thought to damage crops. Later Pope Gregory III named November 1st, the date of the Celtic new-year, All Saints Day, and then, somehow, the tradition filtered down through numerous generations and advertising agencies to what America now calls Halloween. The holiday doesn’t merely echo pagan ideas; it is firmly rooted in pagan practice.

As evidenced by brief account of the practices history, Halloween always centered around death. But at least the Celts took it seriously. What I find most disturbing about the Halloween we know it today is its cynical, flippant, crass presentation of death. Death is not something funny, and it’s not a concept that should be so lightly mocked. The costumes, the decorations—fake blood, knives in backs, gravestones cracked with corpses exposed, disjointed limbs hanging haphazardly from bodies. Maybe these images evoke more for me than for your average American college students. Maybe I’ve followed Middle-Eastern current events a little too religiously over the past decade. But to me,  death is not funny. The disparagement of a topic that deserves, if not reverence, a least a little respect, is what irks me most deeply about the fall holiday season in this country.

So what was the purpose of this article? To rant and rave, like your mom in Hollister, about the unseemly, inappropriate nature of the holiday? Yes, a little bit. To take a break from studying for mid-terms? Yes, a little bit. But most saliently to encourage a thoughtful, conscious approach to the subtle undertones of a widely accepted practice that so easily escapes scrutiny by flashing the innocent, inconspicuous, innocuous badge of ‘holiday spirit.’