Tag: lifestyle

Was Halloween really better back then?

Let’s take a walk down memory lane…

As Halloween gets closer, I’m excited to write about what is my absolute favorite holiday.

I’ve written about Halloween on this blog before briefly, but I’ve never broken down the holiday itself and why I love it.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve always loved Halloween for two reasons:

  1. Unashamedly eating a bunch of free candy
  2. Getting to spend a day pretending to be somebody else

Before getting any deeper, I want to send you down the path of my Halloween history. I always wanted to be as accurate as I could be with my costumes and how I “played” them. Starting with my Tin-Man costume all the way to last year’s Thelonious from Shrek:

  • Tin-Man
  • Ron Weasley
  • Harry Potter
  • Dementor
  • Peter Griffin
  • Sasquatch
  • Arkham Joker
  • Ben Kenobi
  • Joaquin Phoenix Joker
  • Tony Stark
  • Walter White
  • Organization XIII
  • Thelonious

There were other Halloweens with other characters, but for each one, I always made sure to go all-out.

My parents always loved Halloween as well. They would dress up themselves and decorate our house with our school artwork and put pumpkins, skeletons, and spider-webs wherever they could. My dad still does this and it’s the best!

The spirit of Halloween was always alive in our house. So when I’ve recently started to see posts of people nostalgic for ’90s Halloweens, I had to stop and wonder myself, “was it really better back then?“

Judging from my photos, you can tell that I never gave up the spirit of Halloween. I still rank it as my favorite holiday because I can still dress up, but a lot of the candy has since turned into beer.

There’s nothing quite like sending beers to the Realm of Darkness dressed as a member of Organization XIII:

But from what I can tell, candy to beer has always been the natural progression:

I know we live in the age of the internet, so people are always going to be reminiscing on the way things were. But I feel like Halloween truly has the best progression of any holiday.

Fun costumes and candy to fun costumes and beer is a great transition.

But what was it about the Halloween of old that people really miss? Let’s take a walk down memory lane…

The Goosebumps theme song might be the greatest song of all-time, but let’s address the elephant in the room: yes, there seemed to be a special aura of Halloween around 25 years ago.

From the ’90s until the early ’00s, every single one of your favorite shows had Halloween specials.

Not to mention all the Goosebumps episodes themselves, but there was something about Halloween being heavily featured across all television programming for kids that made the time of the year that much more special.

From the Halloweentown movies to the Scary Godmother movies, the Halloween vibes were always felt.

But all of it never felt corporate. It just felt like part of it.

Today, I feel like it’s rare to see spiders crawling across the corner of your TV during October. Nickelodeon used to do that all the time.

Here’s my first point of realization that Halloween hasn’t changed: maybe we just grew up a bit and don’t watch Nickelodeon anymore?

I couldn’t even tell you what shows are on Nick anymore. I just know that the ones I grew up with aren’t there. The SpongeBob of today is not the one I grew up with. But, that doesn’t mean kids aren’t getting the same experience, right?

Who knows? But I just know that Halloween specials still exist for kids, that’s for sure.

The next thing is the school classroom nostalgia.

We’re not in school anymore 20-somethings and 30-somethings. We don’t get to go into Halloween-decorated rooms anymore because we’re not in 1st grade anymore.

I know several teachers that still decorate their rooms for Halloween and I’m sure they do it because they have fond memories from yesteryear.

I guarantee classrooms like the one above still exist.

I’m also sure that junior high students still get Halloween parties like I did and I’m sure kids in younger classes still get to dress up in their costumes to school.

Whether they do or don’t, that’s sort of up to us as the next generation of parents, right?

Beyond TV specials and classrooms, the one thing I do miss the most about Halloween as a kid was that the weather actually felt like it was supposed to. Brisk, leaves on the ground, but manageably nice weather.

Nowadays, it stays a million degrees until it starts to snow. There’s no in-between. Fall weather is slowly becoming something to be nostalgic for because I feel like we don’t get much of it anymore.

Author’s Note: However, as I write this, we’re in the midst of a week-straight of 50-degree weather and I absolutely love it. The Sad Boy Season playlist is on and jamming:

After further investigation, I think people are just bummed they aren’t kids anymore. I don’t think Halloween’s gotten any worse.

Look at my parents from the beginning of this story; do you think I’d love Halloween as much as I do if they didn’t make it special for me? Probably not!

So it’s my mission to have as much fun as I can every Halloween because I’ve had fun on every Halloween I’ve ever had. I will continue to do so and when I have kids of my own one day, I’ll make it my mission to ensure they love Halloween as well.

So, yes, feel nostalgic for a Halloween that used to look like this:

But understand that while it may look or feel a little different today than it did then, just remember that Halloween is always what you make it to be.

Dress up to be whoever you want to be. Let down that hard shell you’ve developed since the ’90s or ’00s and remember what it was like to have fun. You can’t repeat it, but once you start to pretend having fun again, you might just have a little by accident.

I leave you with this song to head into your Halloween with the best spooky vibes I possibly can:

Happy Halloween!!!

~DS

P.S.

One thing we do have over kids today was our candy. Kids these days don’t have Reptar Bars or Wonder Balls and it shows…

The shocking nature of winter

Oh yeah? You and what lightning hands?

Winter has arrived for us all once again.

Winter brings with it many things: the ends of things and the beginnings of others. It’s hard to not have points of reflection as the end of the year draws to a close and the beginning of a new one is preparing to emerge.

For me, it’s a time to remind myself that the cold winter is a shocking reminder to all of us that a peaceful life unappreciated can be taken away rather quickly.

By this, I of course mean that winter is static shock season and with that season, comes a vengeance to disturb that peace.

I don’t know if it’s because I’m Irish, or slightly overweight, or a combination of the two, or if I’m the closest thing in this world to being a Sith lord, but I have an unnatural susceptibility to being shocked in the winter.

However, I can’t harness the power itself. I just know when it’s going to happen and I hesitate to touch doorknobs or hype myself up to grab the TV remote. If I could harness it, it would look something like this:

I know that the logical and scientific explanation of this phenomenon is the colder, drier air and the shock is generated because of the lack of moisture in the air. There is also an added conduction in our skin from our layers of warm clothes combined with the drier air.

However, I seem to get shocked more than the average bear.

Every hand shake or hand hold I offer. Shock. Every door handle I touch. Shock. Every TV and TV remote. Shock. Almost anything after being underneath a blanket. Shock.

Do you know how many conductible things surround you until you’re constantly being shocked by them? It’s a lot.

Of the examples I listed above, the one that troubles me the most is the blanket one. It’s the winter. There are far fewer things more enjoyable in the winter than hiding beneath a blanket and watching movies.

I also have this blue velvet plush blanket that could win competitions for being the most comfortable blanket in the world. The down side to that? It causes for a much more charged up blanket than other blankets.

Removing that blanket and touching a doorknob or TV remote in the winter basically has the same effect as Marv touching the electrified sink handles in Home Alone 2.

“Suck brick, kid!”

Sometimes, the shock is so severe you can even see the sparks fly from my finger to whatever object is shocking me.

Friends and loved ones have noticed my susceptibility to this shock and like many other things in my life, they either question why this happens to me so often or make fun of me.

Both of these responses I’m used to, however, it doesn’t hurt more than the millisecond of a shock during the winter. When added altogether, my total shock pain throughout the winter is a lot more than a millisecond because it’s a constant form of shock therapy.

My winter blog from last year was a lot more intuitive than this one. I thought to myself “Could I write a more inner-thinking, retrospective blog that gives myself more purpose this winter?”

And yes, sure I could. My video game playing, reading, and television watching has remained since last winter. I have a lot to process and think about in my personal life that has me wanting to write a lot. The season still has its moments of comfort despite all the shocking.

I’m replaying the Uncharted series on PlayStation during the console’s 30th Anniversary celebration while also figuring out how I want to revive my YouTube channel to talk about the crumbs of Kingdom Hearts news we’ve gotten. I’m nearing the end of my reread through the Lord of the Rings series following a larger pause for the Percy Jackson series that occupied a majority of my reading this year. I’m also nearing the end of my very first watch of How I Met Your Mother knowing that I’ll watch it again someday because I find Ted Mosby to be extremely relatable.

However, sometimes you just have to write about how often you get shocked by doorknobs. It’s a phenomenon that deserves mentioning.

I hope you all find some comfort this winter despite all the shocks. By the sound of it, this might be a very long and cold winter. I hope I don’t shock you through a handshake or a hug, but no promises.

~DS