If you ask three random people at Parker what “Halloween” means to them, you’ll get three very different answers. The second grader will recount the time when he dressed up as SpiderMan, an homage to his obsession with Peter Parker. The middle schooler will remember the time where they somehow managed to find a candy goldmine of a streetblock, with king size Hershey’s on every door step. The high school girl will characterize the holiday with freezing weather that she failed to dress for.

We all have our different experiences on this particular holiday, but the candy, scary stories, and elaborate costumes can easily distract from the real reason why Halloween started in the first place.

The origins of Halloween can be found in the Celtic festival of Samhain. The limbo between summer and winter brought large amounts of death to their societies, giving them the idea that the line between the living and the dead was temporarily blurred. The Celts believed that on the night of October 31st, “the ghosts of the dead returned to earth.”

The idea is chilling to think about and a solid basis for any good horror movie, but the concept of ghosts coming back to Earth from the underworld wasn’t enough to scare off the Celtics. Instead of being paralyzed by the fear of all their dead neighbors, they celebrated.

Of course, the holiday has evolved. Over the years it has received some new additions: now we trick or treat, plan out group costumes, attend haunted houses. Despite these bells and whistles, the main purpose of the holiday still remains intact even 2,000 years later.

Halloween is a time where our fears are acknowledged, but most of all celebrated–– something we should continue to practice beyond October 31st.

In a society where fear is condemned, constantly being suppressed deeper into the depths of our mind, we are taught that being scared is wrong. Teachers, coaches, and parents recite “the only thing to fear is fear itself.”

Halloween on the other hand, does the exact opposite.

Every year, as each doorstep is cloaked with eerie spider webs, and spooky tombstones are planted in our front yard, our fears become decoration. We spend weeks carefully crafting the perfect costume so that, for one night, we can become someone else. Vampire fangs and clown makeup replace braces and acne.

As insecurities and hormones rampage throughout the Upper School, Halloween is the one night we can escape the burden of our identity.

We masquerade our real fears—the future, failure, rejection—with irrational ones. Only the bravest can make it through a haunted house without screaming, or sit still while a daddy long legs crawls up above. Yet, the greatest revelation of courage always comes after October.

Like to the monster living under the bed, highschool students cannot operate without fear as a driving force. Our “embryonic democracy” wouldn’t function properly if freshman were not intimidated on the first day of school by their new schedules, or juniors did not feel as though, with each physics test, they were chipping away at their futures. Everyday, even if they don’t realize it, Parker students are making life decisions based on fear.

Fear of being different. Fear of looking different. Fear of failure. Fear of being alone.

These patterns extend from the Ivy-bound seniors who appear to have their lives completely mapped out, to the kids who claim they “couldn’t care less.”

When the clock strikes midnight and the calendar page flips to November, we recede to our old ways. We take off the masks, remove the makeup, eat the candy, throw away the wrappers, and push our costumes to the back of the closet: never to be seen again.

This time around, we urge you to leave your fears up for decoration. Keep the eerie spider webs on your front porch. Don’t take down the skeletons that hang from your ceiling. Take your fears of rejection, college, the future, and wear them proudly as if they were new costumes from Party City.

Embrace your fears—cherish them. For once you’ve acknowledged them for long enough, the skeletons that keep you awake turn out to be just plastic.  

And besides, what’s there to be scared of anyway? It’s only high school.

Happy Spooky Szn from the editorial board!!