Dressing Up for Halloween

The relationship that we individually have with holidays is very personal, reasons why we do and don't like certain holidays are based on your own experience; that's why everyone has a different favorite holiday.

My favorite holiday is Halloween. Obviously I love all the foods, and hanging out with my friends, and the candy, and the haunted houses. and all the amazing movies, but the reason that Halloween is my favorite holiday is getting to dress up.

Every year I have a costume picked out in June. I always know what I'm going to be super early. I remember being really little and we would get the first Halloween costume catalog and I would tear through it. I loved dressing up as a little kid, I loved being fancy, I loved looking cute, and I loved being someone different.

Those things have very much translated into my adulthood and I think Halloween and my strict catholic school really inspired my love of extravagant wardrobe.

Getting to dress up for Halloween with the highlight of the school year at my school because we had to wear uniforms. it was the one day a year we really got to be anything we wanted, and so now that I'm not in school anymore and I don't have to wear a uniform I kind of treat every day like Halloween and I dress up every single day.

Our school uniforms were boring, and itchy, and ugly. Even when we did get free dress days we were very very limited on what we were and weren't allowed to wear. Halloween was the one day a year they really let us wear essentially any kind of costume we wanted!

I would be so bored of wearing the same thing every single day that I would be planning my costume from the second of the school year started, even before that most of the time.

I realized I really liked dressing up. I really liked that aspect specifically of Halloween and I started to incorporate it more into my life outside of school on the weekends. I would plan what to wear over the weekend all week, just like I would plan all year for Halloween. Even then I was still spending most of my time in an itchy, old, boring, school uniform and my the best day to express myself was Halloween.

I would/do go all out every year. The costume would usually have to do with whatever I was obsessed with that year. One year I was Dorthy from The Wizard of Oz, another year I was Lucy from Narnia. My favorites were being Fred Wesley in 5th grade, and a dead hipster in 8th grade.

This year I’m going to be a generic fire bender from Avatar the Last Airbrnder because I have been absolutely in love with that show this year. The second I finished watching it I knew I wanted to be a fire bender for Halloween! I was especially excited to start planning my costume as well due to everything that’s been going on this year.

Now that I'm in college I can wear whatever I want, and I do. However I still like to take the time to remember when I couldn't and how passionate I was about dressing up for Halloween every year. I think it's Halloween didn't exist I would be a very different person.