PERSONAL POST ALERT. IF YOU READ THIS YOU WILL NOT LEARN ANYTHING ABOUT GAMING BUT YOU WILL LEARN ABOUT ME, YOUR FEARLESS LEADER. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
I was born on October 30th in the early 90s. My parents are both very conservative and religious, so my mom screamed and cried when she heard that I might be born on Halloween. Thankfully I popped outta her around 10pm because I’m pretty sure she would have taken a rusty spoon and cut me out herself if it had gotten any closer to midnight. Halloween is a day that many religions associate with evil, and for good reason. Do you know the origins of Halloween? No? Well let’s hop on The Magic School Bus and learn something today shall we?
The origins of Halloween are a bit scattered, so let me summarize some of the big points. Basically, Halloween was used by some as an “end of harvest” celebration, and by others as a religious time to honor the dead. The Celtics believed that on Oct. 31-Nov 1st the boundary between the physical and spiritual realms was at its weakest, allowing spirits and demons to cross over to our world. The belief that demons and the dead wander the earth on Halloween is where many of the stereotypical Halloween trends come from. Jack-o-lanterns were made of old turnips (not pumpkins) to ward off demons, bonfires were lit to light the way for souls to return to their resting places, costumes were worn to protect oneself, etc. Eventually, as we’ve done with all holidays, Western culture took all of this and turned it into the wild, wacky, slutty, crazy, horrifying night of debauchery that it is now. But that’s enough history for today. Let’s go back to the 90s when I was a kid and dressing up as Luke Skywalker and getting copious amounts of candy were the only thing I ever wanted in my life.
My parents were so anti-Halloween that they told us everyone trick or treating was worshipping the Devil. The church we went to when I was a kid told me that I would lose my salvation and go to hell if I even thought about celebrating Halloween. I still remember that my parents would turn off every light in the house, shut all the curtains, and we’d all huddle in their room with candles to watch The Sound of Music. That’s right. While all you Power Rangers, Ninja Turtles, and Disney Princesses were out getting candy, I was in my Eeyore onesie eating popcorn and singing “Do-Re-Mi”. Welcome to my childhood. And believe it or not, this lasted for years. As I grew up though, I started to become infatuated with Halloween and the horror genre. I mean can you blame me? Every year as I started to get excited about my birthday coming up, all the scary shit would come out. I’m pretty sure I’m like Schrodinger’s cat, and that’s not ok because I fucking hate cats. At night in high school, my sister and I would sneak into our basement and watch 80s horror movies. Personally, I wasn’t even that big of a fan of the actual movies; I just loved watching behind the scenes footage of how they did the kills. One of my guilty pleasures was hopping on YouTube to watch how the Saw traps were conceived, designed for film, and then executed. It was so cool! At least until my parents found us out in high school and I spent a year locked in the closet with barely any food or water until one day a giant bearded man flew directly into our house on his broom and told me I was a wizard and my parents weren’t my parents and then I woke up and got grounded for 3 months in real life. Yep, life sucked until I graduated high school. I actually don’t think I dressed up for Halloween until I was in college and let me tell you, what a time to start.
The year was 2010. I was a freshman in college and I’d been invited to a Halloween house party. It was going to have everything I’d seen in the movies. There would be alcohol. There would be scantily clad girls. There would be alcohol. There would be dancing, debauchery, and the possibility of sexual intercourse. There would be alcoho-…do you understand the point I am trying to make with the words I am typing on this webpage? So what do you do when you’ve been withheld from years and years of partying so close to your birthday? You go balls to the motherfuckin’ wall that’s what you do. After way too much thought, I decided to keep my costume simple but unique. I loved Sons of Anarchy in college. So I ordered a black biker vest of Amazon, printed off these patches I found on the internet and used silicon to attach them to the vest. The silicon sealed the paper to the vest better than super glue would have, and I applied a coat of silicon over each of the patches to further hide the fact that they were paper. I rounded out the rest of the outfit with a black bandana, biker gloves, a blue flannel (like what Jax wears in the show), work jeans and work boots. I looked fucking sick. I wish I had a picture of that outfit to share but I didn’t allow one because I was so terrified that my parents would somehow find out.
I showed up to the party way too fucking early because ya know, my parents raised me to be punctual. It was like 8:30pm and I was the only one ready so I grabbed a drink and got the evening started. Coincidently, this was also one of the first nights I’d ever drank alcohol, but more on that later. About an hour later the night really kicked off and I immediately regretted those early drinks. You remember those times right? Where there’s a giant tube of “witches brew” (aka Hawaiian Punch and Burnetts Vodka) and everyone tries to see how many fun and different ways they can force their livers to say “fuck you”? That was us. We were playing every drinking game under the sun; flip cup, beer pong, quarters, circle of death, etc. Around 11pm, I walked around the back of the house and threw up just pure red liquid that to this day don’t know if it was blood or not. Regardless, I went right back to partying until midnight when I blacked out. I woke up on a couch in the front yard of a sketchy ass neighborhood, just in time to watch the parade of “walk of shamers” heading back to their apartments. I think I said I’d never drink again later that day (LOL). There was a pretty big highlight to the night though. Somehow in my blackout state, I happened to get the number of a slutty Snow White, who actually called me back a few days later and I’m pretty sure that was the first girl I had sex with. So yea, my parents told me that Haloween was evil, I said “no you’re wrong”, and then proceeded to do everything I promised them I would never do in one night. Hooraaaaaaaay.
So now I’m in my late 20s. My liver has somehow survived the 7 circles of hell I’ve put it through over the last 9 years. I’ve been to countless Halloween parties, each of which I have made a point to note what day my birthday is on. I’ve been a biker, Jason Voorhees, a gluten-free snob, and Negan from The Walking Dead. What’s the moral of this story? Don’t really have one. But if you don’t want your future child to end up like me, maybe don’t fuck as much in Jan-Feb. There’s no escaping the Halloween baby syndrome. Dread it. Run from it. Destiny still arrives.
