Halloween Sucks This Year (And Every Year)

At the time of writing this—and I know I will regret mentioning it in, like, one week—there is a popular meme construction on social media that’s basically like: “‘X-very specific and/or innocuous thing’ lives in my mind rent-free.” As an old broad with terrible memory, the only thing that lives in the vacuous abyss I call a brain is Harry Styles, and things Harry Styles has said and done. An example of this is an interview he did with BBC Radio 1 in October 2019, when he offered an unpopular opinion: “Halloween is not fun! I’m sorry. I think, as a child, I used to leave it too late to decide on my costume, which meant I always turned up with the worst costume. So I have, kind of like… I have negative connotations with Halloween.” Preach, my dear cherub! Halloween blows. It is not fun. No one should do it.

Styles continued, “Also, you’re dressing up, and you’re like, ‘Do people go for it, or do they not really go for it, or do we go for it?’ And to really go for it, I need to plan it. If someone’s like, ‘Oh, come to this party tonight,’ and then you go, ‘Do people go for it?’ [and they say,] ‘Yes,’ and you’re like, ‘Well, I can’t tonight.’ You know? It’s not fun. I’d rather not go. Otherwise, I’m the guy who didn’t dress up.” Amen! I’m officially converting to the church of Stylesian, where our only commandment is stay the hell home.

“I’d rather not go.” – Harry Styles

Though that particularly illuminating soundbite was recorded in 2019, I think it holds especially true for 2020: Are you really going to risk contracting covid-19 to see your idiot friends dressed as sexy Mario and Luigi? I mean, they look fine as hell, but that’s why god invented the nerds who invented Instagram. Stay inside. There’s nothing for you outside. At any rate, the best holidays—Thanksgiving (not the historical, colonial, and racial violence bit, but the eating and drinking a lot inside) and Christmas, Hanukkah… basically all the December celebrations (ditto)—are right around the corner, so stay put and be rewarded. Halloween is all anticipation and no glory, much like New Year’s Eve, and there’s no reason to squeeze your ham hocks into latex for a few hours of CDC-violating carousing. Just… don’t do Halloween.

The exception to all of this, of course, is if you have a baby or know a baby and are planning on putting that baby in an adorkable costume because what are they going to do about it? Fight you? They’re just a little baby. In that case, you can do Halloween, but festivities should be limited to a socially distant video and/or photoshoot for Instagram. I will be checking.