A certain Oswegonian editor published an opinion in the Sept. 23 issue arguing that the season to celebrate Halloween has already begun.
“Halloween is deserving of just as much appreciation of occasions like Christmas, and therefore is entitled to be celebrated with the same amount of enthusiasm for just as much time,” Laker Review Editor, Ethan Stinson, said.
Stinson argued that because mainstream society has accepted Christmas crawl and that Halloween is celebrated with an intensity comparable to that of Christmas, it is thus forgivable for someone to celebrate Halloween once autumn begins. After all, some people, including his housemates, put up Christmas decorations the morning after Halloween.
Stinson seems to grossly conflate the celebration of seasonal changes with that of seasonal holidays. He annotates Halloween as having an “orange-fronted color palette” with “visions of scarecrows, cornstalks and pumpkins,” and that “Halloween is practically synonymous with fall.” One can raise the argument if Thanksgiving should be celebrated with the same earliness as Christmas and Halloween. One would doubt that Stinson would argue so, since this would mean Thanksgiving décor and roasted turkey corpses and annual intra-familial discourse about European colonialism would interfere with his precious Halloween.
What is different about Halloween and Christmas from Thanksgiving? Stinson mentions it himself: candy. He argues that with an extended Halloween season, one can indulge in “sweet, sugary goodness” for more time. Aside from the fact that he notes in the same paragraph that candy already has “universality throughout the entire year,” he places such an appraisal on candy that should make one question if he is involved in the confectionary industry. While Stinson may find Halloween candy a speciality, his dentist might have some issues with that.
Stinson differentiates Halloween from being a bizarro Christmas in one respect and it is in its movies. He mentions “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” and “Coraline” as examples of films that people enjoy throughout the year but Halloween enhances. Despite Stinson having a film major he casually ignores the time-sensitivity of films such as “Hocus Pocus” or “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!” which actually take place during Halloween unlike his examples.
Stinson fails to notice how his argument is disproven in his evidence; if Halloween-related things are enjoyable outside of the Halloween season but are enhanced by Halloween, how would extending the Halloween season sustain their enhancement? If anything, extending Halloween would snuff its uniqueness and like Stinson says, make it “practically synonymous with fall.”
