What have the Editors in Chief been thinking about this week?
Hey everyone! How’s your week been going? If you read our thoughts from last week, we hope you enjoyed taking our challenge of staying present and spending time with friends without thinking too much about posting it to socials. Surprisingly, this week we have not been talking too much about all of our stressful deadlines despite midterms being right around the corner. Instead, as the spooky season approaches, we’ve been contemplating Halloween of course, as an addition to our weekly Costa rant session. As a brief disclaimer, if you’re a die hard Halloween fan, do not read on - Isla will be hardcore ripping into it as a concept.
Molly: Before Isla rips this holiday to shreds, I’ll happily defend Halloween. While it’s not my top tier favourite of the holidays, I thoroughly enjoy the spooky vibes of the October season and always love a good excuse to eat more chocolate. It’s a fun opportunity to coordinate costumes with your friends and Halloween parties are always a great time.
Isla: Halloween is meh. I said it Molly - sue me! To be completely honest I don’t really mind Halloween - I can put up with it in the grand scheme of things, but please do not call it a ‘holiday’. It’s not like students need ANOTHER excuse to go drinking. Once you reach a certain age it is generally frowned upon to go Trick-or-Treating, which is the only plus side I can see, because let’s be honest here, I cannot say no to free chocolates!
Molly: I have to say I disagree! It absolutely is a holiday, and a huge part of it is the nostalgia aspect. As a kid, I loved going Trick-or-Treating with friends and family (although as October in Toronto is always freezing and often has snow falling, we’d always have to bundle up with coats over our costumes which was less fun…) Now in university, I appreciate the concept of “Halloweekend.” Why not extend such a holiday into several days, allowing you to have different costumes and attend multiple events!
Isla: Okay I get it, dressing up can be fun, but I definitely do not have the budget for one costume, let alone something different for each day of the week. It’s already difficult trying to come up with a single costume idea. Perhaps it’s the history student in me, but there is a complete lack of rules to this costume game for a celebration that is meant to be spooky. You should be dressing up within the realm of monsters, witches, and vampires. Halloween is way too commercialised and the rules have been thrown out of the window in favour of dressing up as literally anything. I’m sure your Marvel and your Once Upon a Time themed costumes will be great, but none of it makes sense.
Molly: You’re one to talk, didn’t you dress up as one of the Peaky Blinders last year?
Isla: I knew you’d bring that up.
Molly: Sure, the whole point of Halloween is to ward off spirits by dressing up in crazy costumes. But surely there’s nothing scarier than the impending doom of commercialization…perhaps this year taking the form of whatever franchise has recently been acquired by Disney.
Isla: You can have a costume party whenever you want, we don’t need to ruin the designated spooky party of the year. At the Christmas party you never dress up as Kevin from Home Alone or the John Lewis Christmas advert.
Molly: Speak for yourself! Halloween may not have quite the same fanfare as Christmas, for example, but there are so many seasonal activities you can do to get into the spooky season vibes. From watching Halloween themed movies like It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown and Ghostbusters to carving pumpkins (don’t forget to roast the pumpkin seeds, so delish!) There are a variety of ways to enjoy the lead up to the 31st.
Isla: We love an excuse for movie night. But if anyone tries to start a debate with me about whether The Nightmare Before Christmas is a Halloween or a Christmas film, I will run home and hibernate until it is socially acceptable for me to watch Love Actually, Elf, and A Muppet’s Christmas Carol. And you’re right, my opinion on Halloween is entirely hypocritical and contradictory - I despise Halloween but love the nostalgia of it. I would probably be more willing to embrace the Halloween spirit if I could still go Trick-or-Treating for the free chocolates. Basically, people need to take Halloween less seriously and also more seriously at the same time.
As you may discover if you become a weekly EIC Spotlight reader, Molly is the more cheerful one of the duo, and Isla gets annoyed at a lot of things. But Molly has managed to convince Isla to embrace the Halloween spirit a little more, so in light of the simultaneous controversial issues and wholesome vibe invoked, our weekly recommendation is to embrace the nostalgia of the season: maybe return to an old Halloween costume, do a movie night for that film you watched every year as a kid, watch all of the “Halloween Heist” episodes of Brooklyn Nine Nine, and instead of going pumpkin spice crazy, opt for the supreme hot chocolate. Halloween is something to not be taken too seriously–save your energy for the December holiday season, you’ll need it! Either way we both agree that for us Christmas and New Year celebrations are (as Molly says) ‘God tier.’
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