redwoodalchan

So, now that I've gotten back from the (belated) Halloween party at my old martial-arts school, I think it's finally time to bring this year's Halloween festivities to a close. So I'll just end by sharing my final thoughts here.

Back when I was a little girl, I actually used to get very scared on Halloween. I never disliked Halloween (how could I dislike a holiday that meant getting dressed up and getting free candy?) but I used to be very, very scared of the monsters associated with Halloween—ghosts, vampires, witches, skeletons, and so on. There was even one year in which I got scared when I attended a party at the high school I would later enroll in (I was in elementary school at the time) and for the rest of October I was fearful. So to help myself cope, I developed the notion that the “hauntings,” as it were, only lasted through the end of October. As soon as Halloween ended, all the monsters—the ghosts, goblins, vampires, zombies, etc.--would go back into their box and stay there, reemerging only for the following Halloween.

And I clung to this view religiously for years, even long after I realized that vampires and werewolves and zombies don't actually exist and couldn't actually hurt me. I'd take the opportunity of Halloween to go out and get scared, go to haunted houses and all that; and then once Halloween ended I could count on returning to my calm, logical reality where the monsters were no longer relevant and could no longer scare me (lately, of course, I've taken to volunteering at haunted houses and the like as much as possible—it's still more comfortable for me to be on the giving end of scares than the receiving end). To this day, the last song on my Halloween costume party CD is still my favorite, and I can't tell if that's because it sounds the most pleasant to my ears or just because it's the last one and thus, signifies having gotten through Halloween.

And this carried over once I became an anime fan. Once I started watching a lot of anime, I started assigning different anime to different times of the year, and I always had a few scary anime at a time on hand to help celebrate Halloween (this year, it was the three shows I included in my Halloween anime roundup, plus “Vampire Knight,” which I never finished). But every time Halloween ended I always stopped watching these shows and switched to something else. And it was usually a funny show like “Baccano!” because that would break up the tension of having scared myself silly all October.

That's beginning to change, though. This year, as I was watching “Shiki” episodes to distract myself from the impending storm it occurred to me that for once I actually half-wished that Halloween lasted all year, so that “Shiki” would always be relevant to watch and discuss, all year long. Of course, I never actually sustain those thoughts for very long, because I'm aware that if any part of the year lasted all year long there would be nothing new to look forward to. But I began to realize that the Halloween monsters and shows, which I used to think of as things to tolerate for October and then lock firmly away, had become welcome distractions, and that in reality, nothing about Halloween or any of the scary anime I watched was anywhere near as scary as the problems that actually plague the real world today.

So, that's the note on which I end Halloween this year, I guess. It's time to put away the Halloween decorations and costumes, roll up my sleeves, and face what the rest of the year will bring. Here's hoping that Halloween as we know it is still around next year.

Well, at least I still have the Pokemon holiday fic exchange to cheer myself up.