Halloween is Dumb

I know it's an unpopular opinion, but I can't help how I feel. I have to come out and say it: Halloween is dumb.

What's my problem with Halloween? Maybe it's that I've watched over the last 20 years as Halloween has gotten bigger and bigger and bigger. We now have nearly as many people in our town who decorate the outside of their houses for Halloween as we do for Christmas. Just down the street from us, we have a neighbor that we refer to as the Over-The-Top Christmas Decorators, and their Halloween decorations have gotten as elaborate as their Christmas decorations. On Mall Road in Florence, Kentucky, there are three--THREE!--Halloween superstores (which may, I guess, be as much a comment about empty storefronts on Mall Road as it is about Halloween). Do we really need three different places to go for inflatable zombies?

Maybe it's the fact that adults seem to have stolen Halloween from kids. Halloween used to be a thing where kids got dressed up and walked from house to house and got candy. But parents now are worried whether or not the treats their kids are getting are organic and sustainably grown, so they limit how much Trick or Treating their kids do. Meanwhile, the electronic traffic signs on the interstates all this weekend have been reminding adults to drive sober. Adults getting drunk on Halloween shouldn't be a thing!

Maybe it's that the things that are supposed to be scary about Halloween aren't. I'm not afraid of zombies or vampires or skeletons. If my Over-The-Top Christmas Halloween Decorators up the street want to make a really scary yard, they should remove all of the Styrofoam tombstones, inflatable Jack-o-Lanterns, and animated wolf men, and they should replace them with stand up figures of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, little North Korean mushroom clouds, and mannequins carrying tiki torches a la Charlottesville.

Now THAT'D be scary!