Humanist Halloween: Fake Scares for a Change

I laughed so hard when I saw this dog “costume” on Pinterest last year. I just hope the dog actually needed the neck cone!

I don’t eat much candy but vegan is the way to go. You’d be surprised at how many products are “accidentally vegan.” Check out this resource guide for ethical (albeit still unhealthy) candy options!

When my daughter Anya was born on October 31, 1999, Halloween became not just an evening of roaming the neighborhood for the best haunted house or the most delicious candy but a week of parties—at school, at home, with friends and family. I remember when Anya was little she said, “Isn’t it great everyone goes all out for my birthday?!” From little girls carving pumpkins to teens solving a murder mystery, I can now only guess about her epic college costume parties where free candy is no longer the highlight. For us at home, the fun has turned to sneaking around the neighborhood placing “boo-zed” adult treats on our neighbor’s doorsteps under the secrecy of the night moon.

One thing hasn’t changed over the years for our family, and that is our annual Halloween Harry Potter movie marathon. The rules: you have to start a week or so before Halloween with the Sorcerer’s Stone and stay in sequence until the end with the Deathly Hallows, no matter your favorite of the eight-film series. My son Ari and I began our movie venture last week and are working our way to the delights of Halloween night! As for candy, Snickers is always my chocolate of choice.

My top Halloween movie combines most of my favorite things: animation, catchy sing-a-longs, and Christmas! Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas has always been one of favorite fall (and winter!) flicks. Do I know all the words to the gruesome “This Is Halloween?” Definitely. Is Oogie-Boogie my absolute favorite villain? Hands down. Nightmare Before Christmas pairs equally well with a mug of apple cider or hot chocolate and retains the creepy spirit of Halloween without giving me any actual nightmares.

In 2016 my partner and I were rockstars Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love. We were certainly those rockstars at the party we attended, belting it out doing karaoke, although without quite as much talent.

As a pre-teen I loved Marathon bars (braided caramel covered in milk chocolate). When I was a teenager I saw a double feature of Halloween and Night of the Living Dead at the drive-in theater, and later that night I woke up the entire household when I was out of bed and physically fighting a horde of zombies in Michael Myers masks (that in my dream were actually William Shatner masks) breaking through my bedroom window. It was one of the best nightmares I ever had.

As for this vintage (mid-1980s) photo of me in costume, it’s possible I’m dressed up as the title character from Monty Python’s Life of Brian (“I’m not the Messiah!”). Other possible explanations exist, however, I don’t remember them. The nice thing is I haven’t changed a bit in twenty-five years.

Having weighed in with a candy and a costume last year (Mounds and “Barbie Sanders”) and favorite scary movie a few years before that (Freaks), this year I’m offering a jack-o-lantern that I think a lot of humanist science types will dig. It comes from a Facebook page called “Sh-t” Academics Say” (and, yes, they’re gutsy enough to spell it out!).

In 2009 when the H1N1 virus dominated the news, my husband and I dressed up as the swine flu. We found a lab coat and protective gear at a thrift shop, and I sewed the pig heads out of foam and felt. It’s probably the most time I’ve ever spent making a costume. And we repurposed them the following year with suits and dollar-sign ties so we could be capitalist pigs!

I can’t handle gore, but I love very creepy, psychological films. My favorites are The Babadook, It Follows, and The Shining. My favorite candy is Kit-Kat, which I’ve eaten my whole life by nibbling the chocolate ends and sides first before eating the wafer layers. I recently learned that this is how Kourtney Kardashian recommends it, which has completely ruined it for me.

This year I dressed up as a banana as part of a couple costume with my favorite strawberry. I take myself pretty seriously, so it was a lot of fun to pick a silly costume and defy expectations. My favorite Halloween candy is the 100 Grand bar. It has the perfect balance of chocolate, caramel, and crunch.

If I’m being honest, Halloween has never been my thing. I look upon the arrival of this holiday and I just want to get through it so we can move on to Thanksgiving/my birthday/Christmas/New Year’s—all vastly superior celebrations, in my opinion.

In my youth, my best costume was the year I was a house. What looked like a simple box around my body, adorned with painted-on windows and doors, hid a genius piece of construction—a chimney shaft that collected all of the candy I acquired from trick-or-treating. No treat bag needed!

While Halloween is arguably a chocolate-centric holiday, I’m usually in the mood for anything else. Give me Sour Patch Kids; give me jelly beans; give me candy corn; give me Dots!

I love creative Halloween costumes, especially when they’re easy to wear and inexpensive. For this bee outfit, I got a $5 spider headband, removed the legs, and added wings. As for candy, I’m always happy to get M&Ms or mini Hershey’s bars. I’m not a fan of scary movies but would definitely watch Nightmare Before Christmas anytime.

I’m not a big Halloween person—I rarely eat any candy (but when I do, I like Ferrero Rocher hazelnut chocolates), don’t like horror movies, and since middle school I think I can count the times I dressed in costume on one hand.

As for screen scares, having read the book decades ago and listening to the audio version a few years back, I’m just now getting around to watching The Handmaid’s Tale, which is scarily realistic. We see fascism reign, as Far-Right leaders use a combination of faith and fear to strip people’s rights until they’re completely gone. If you think these possibilities are far-fetched, remember that today there are immigrant children living in camps away from their parents as an intentional tactic to discourage people perceived as different or dangerous from entering the United States. While some groups are protesting, there should be a tidal wave of protests and labor stoppages necessary to force the government’s hand. Instead, we see the president pushing further every month, this time seeking to take away citizenship from those born on our soil. It won’t stop if Americans continue to allow it.