Why Halloween Is Actually The Undisputed Best Holiday

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Guys, it’s here. The best holiday of the entire year is finally upon us! After a month straight of watching horror movies, buying treats for the neighborhood kids, and drinking pumpkin flavored beers, Halloween has finally arrived!

But maybe you’re not like me. Maybe you’re the type that gets hyped when we enter the season of Thanksgiving and Christmas. Maybe you prefer the summer nights filled with fireworks on the Fourth of July. Maybe you’re the sort who has a special place in your heart for St. Patrick’s Day, Valentines Day, Easter, or Martin Luther King Day. In any case, you are wrong.

You may protest. You may point out the joys of Thanksgiving dinner followed by football, Christmas mornings around the tree, cooking out by the lake amid the glow of sparklers. I don’t care, for as I shall demonstrate each of these holidays has some major drawback that prevents it from being the holiday GOAT. For that GOAT is unquestionably Halloween, for the following reasons.

1. It’s not religious
Right away, we can take points off the board from Christmas and Easter for the simple fact that there is a sizeable portion of the population who doesn’t, you know, believe in Jesus. While you Christmas lovers will revel in your mistletoe, eggnog, and candy canes, you’re ignoring all the little Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, and Atheist boys and girls out there with their noses pressed up against the window. How does it feel, knowing that while you were flaunting all the presents that were coming to you, seeing all the mall Santas and Christmas specials, there were kids completely left out in the dust?

You know what religion you have to be to celebrate Halloween? Doesn’t matter, it has nothing to do to religion! As long as the religion you belong to isn’t super crazy about dressing up in fun costumes or weirdly thinks the holiday is about devil worship you’ll be fine. Why are all those people from the Westboro Baptist Church giving me dagger stares? Probably because they think I’m proving their next point…

2. It’s not political
War on Christmas! How many times have you seen your aunt put up some Facebook post about how we’re being forced at gunpoint by Antifa to say “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” because, gasp, everyone doesn’t believe the same thing as you!

And oh God, the arrogance of us to celebrate a day of giving thanks, commemorating a time when Native Americans helped out starving settlers, building it up as this great memorial of helping your fellow man and community…and completely ignoring that those Native Americans were relentlessly butchered and exterminated by those same settlers they aided. As long as everyone is going to start shitting on Columbus Day, we need to acknowledge that Thanksgiving is founded on the same whitewashing of history. Don’t believe me? Ask a Native American friend what they’re thankful for when you go around the table. And try not to look too uncomfortable when they say it’s that the federal government gave them five cents per acre for the land that was stolen from their ancestors.

There’s no war on Halloween. The most political the holiday gets is when someone wears an offensive costume, but even that’s not directly tied to the holiday itself. As we’ve seen in the news, there’s plenty of time to get outraged by idiots wearing blackface or people getting overly triggered by someone they think is appropriating their culture.

3. There’s no traveling.
I am known to be heavily anti-travel. I hate all the effort, burden, and inconvenience that traveling requires. For the popular holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas, travel is likely required to get the whole family/friend group together. Add the fact that these are the two worst times of the year to travel, and the holiday season quickly looks a lot more like Hell on earth than a jolly good time. With all the delays, everyone is sure to arrive nice and irritated from the 3-hour delay or six-hour drive in traffic.

Halloween, on the other hand, requires zero traveling. You can hand out candy from the comfort of your own home while watching scary movies. If there’s a party, sure you can head out there, but it’s not an obligation. Best of all, you’re not going to be stuck sleeping on the couch in Uncle Bill’s rumpus room (yes, he insists on calling it a rumpus room) after the holiday proceedings are over. You’ll get to go back to your own bed and call it a night, instead of spending three more non-holiday days in the middle of nowhere trying to figure out how to kill time before going through the travel gauntlet again.

4. No family required
And once you’ve finished all that travel, who is waiting for you on the other end? Why it’s a group of people you’ve barely spoken to in the past year, kept together out of nothing more than blood ties and guilt. Instead of spending time hanging with your friend at a bar dressed up, you get to hear tales from your cousin about how hard it is to have four kids or listen to your uncle go on about the latest George Soros conspiracy theory he heard.

And, by the way, this is coming from someone who actually loves his family. I love hanging out with my aunts and uncles. We have a great time because we’re all unabashed alcoholics so we spend the entire time drinking and watching movies. It’s a great time. But, even for me, the family obligation can be an issue, especially when you have a significant other who wants to spend time with their family. Now you got a tough call to make, as you and your partner try to figure out how to tell dear old mom you won’t be there for Christmas because you’re going to be with your girlfriend’s family. You won’t get any passive-aggressive, guilt-filled texts when you tell her she isn’t going to get to spend the holidays with her darling child on Halloween.

5. The costumes
Yes, they can cause controversy, but the Halloween costume is your time to shine. To show your creativity, your sense of humor, or your proclivities towards horror. It’s the chance to comment on the pop culture or political events of the year in a fun, playful way. And don’t forget the kids!

Because for the 364 other days of the year, I don’t give two shits about your kids. I will avoid them like the plague, groan whenever I see professional mommies posting yet another pic of their little darling on Instagram. But on Halloween? Oh, baby give me them pictures of your little one in a pumpkin, skeleton, or Pikachu costume. Give me all the damn pictures. The most interaction I willingly have with children all year is repeating the phrase “what are you supposed to be” and I don’t regret that for a goddamn second.

6. The food
I’ll admit, this is the weakest argument H-ween has in its favor. I mean, sure we’re getting candy, but other holidays have full-on meals or cookouts associated with them. But here’s where I’m probably going to lose most of you: I think Christmas dinner and Thanksgiving dishes are wholly overrated.

The main courses of those two meals are ham and turkey, which means they’re basically dressed-up lunch meats. Cranberry sauce is a joke and everyone knows it. Green bean casserole is an abomination. The only acceptable dishes are potato based and make you feel like you have a brick in your stomach for two days afterward. Pumpkin flavor gets trashed when it’s in coffee and scones but is somehow allowed to ruin a pie. As for cookouts on the 4th? They’re okay but always ruined by that one asshat who insists on grilling corn on the cob, chicken breasts, or (and I have seen this) tofu-burgers. And potato salad is gross.

So which would you rather have? A huge meal that is going to weigh you down and make you feel like shit for two days straight while you’re trying to get rid of the leftovers you’re already sick of, or a big ol’ pile of candy you can finish at your leisure. I’ll take the candy.

7. We’re drinking
As noted above, most holidays with my family involve alcohol, but I imagine that is not the case with every family. Many of you probably have parents who don’t tend to drink, conservative relatives, or just tend to keep a lower profile in big events. Halloween, however, is not like that.

We are going out drinking, and we are going out hard. Someone you know is going to be hosting a party around Halloween, guaranteed. There will be costumes, ‘Monster Mash’ will be playing, and there will be plenty of booze to go around. And if not, you can definitely pay an exorbitant cover and get into a bar with plenty of other party people. Being alone and drinking on Halloween is fine, you can always find a party. Being alone in a bar drinking on Thanksgiving or Christmas, though, is the saddest thing that can happen to an adult.

8. The movies are better
Halloween is the film-lover’s great holiday. You can go traditional slasher movies, paranormal, found footage, monster movies, or even your classic old-school romps. There are some great horror movies, some truly awful ones, and some for the whole family.

But yeah, feel free to keep watching “A Christmas Story” on repeat for the billionth consecutive year, or convince me that “Elf” doesn’t suck ass.

The only argument I would consider as to why Halloween is a lesser holiday than Christmas and the like is that Halloween is not a national holiday, so you have to go to work. But don’t worry about it, once I’m President of the United States that is going to change. Adios Labor Day, because we’re getting that day after Halloween off every year when I’m in charge! .

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Josh T.

Don't call me a liar, but you don't have to call me a truther.

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