There was a time when dressing up as a rabbit was the highlight of your year. You heard the final click of the sewing machine, put down your Pokemon cards, took your eyes off of PBS Kids and stared in awe at the fluffy white suit in your mother’s hands. You wore it for weeks in anticipation. You begged to wear it to school and were denied. When the big night finally came you cringed as your mother pinned your white tail to your fluffy rump, fearing it might poke into your real skin. Once your three whiskers, drawn with mom’s best eyeliner, were finished and your pink lipstick nose was applied, you were ready to hop down the bunny trail. Your sister, mummified with toilet paper, stood next to you for the picture. She then took your small hand in hers and led you to the first house because she’d done this before. As you toddled to keep up with her, your pumpkin-shaped candy bucket bobbed against your leg like a merry ghost. From the porch your mother watched you go, waving but not worrying. She knew you’d come back eventually.
One of my first memories was from Halloween. My mom had dressed me up as a cow, and she brought me to a magic show at a neighbor’s house. I remember how surprised I was that her friend pulled a real bunny out of a hat. It was just so cool. While everyone has different Halloween experiences, many Dartmouth students recall dressing up for Halloween throughout their childhood.
Tierra Lynch ’16 remembers going trick-or-treating with her family every year.
“I would put on my princess costume — which I wore six years in a row — and I would go trick-or-treating with my little sister around the plaza because there weren’t many houses where I live,” Lynch said.
David Cook ’16 also recalls being a serial costume wearer.
“I was a vampire four years in a row, and then my mom made me choose something else finally,” he said.
Although you may wear the same costume year after year, every Halloween is different. It starts off as a family holiday: your parents pick out your costume, and you share your candy with your siblings. Then comes the year your sister won’t go with you anymore. She was either too cool, or her friends were having a party with boys. Whatever the plan, it didn’t involve you. She didn’t even help you cut the holes in your ghost costume. Your mom still watched you head out, but she spent the evening watching Halloween specials on TV instead of keeping the porch scarecrow company and waiting for you.
By the time high school rolled around, you wondered if you were supposed to go as something fun or something, well, fun. Some of your friends were funky chickens, and some were hot chicks. You opted for something in the middle, a sexy Holden Caulfield, which nobody understood. The height difference between you and the other trick-or-treaters started to become a problem. You realized you could buy candy with your own money, but you never did. Instead of binging on sweets, you binged on secrets, spin the bottle and being seventeen.
Cook noticed this change in Halloween celebrations when he entered high school.
“It started to become a thing, where you would have boy-girl costume parties instead of trick-or-treating,” Cook said.
Some people find that their age makes it difficult to trick-or-treat.
When Beau Gibson ’16 tried to trick-or-treat with some friends his senior year of high school, he was turned away by many houses, for being too old. Lynch, however, continued until she came to college.
“I stopped trick-or-treating when I came to Dartmouth, because I would always go with my little sister,” she said. “I was a ninja one year, I was once Howl from ‘Howls Moving Castle,’ and one time my friend and I were Pikachu. I would always pick weird things.”
Coming to Dartmouth definitely changed the way that many people celebrate Halloween. The houses you approached contained things tastier than candy, scarier than vampires, stronger than Frankenstein and far more likely to worry your mother. Maybe you threw Holden Caulfield out the window and dressed as a sexy sailor or a sexy policewoman. Or maybe you tried to think of something clever. Unlike in the olden days, your costume did not become an integral part of your school wardrobe for the next few months. It stayed under your bed for future parties, where such flair would be appreciated. There were plenty of other more memorable nights, and Halloween was brushed off until next year.
Perhaps coming to Dartmouth was that moment when your family decided it was okay for you to go out alone and come home with new, unusual things, when they stopped sitting on the porch and started going to their own parties.
Although you may celebrate in a different manner, and you no longer have your parents to plan your night, many students keep up with old traditions. Coming to college has not stopped me from eating unhealthy amounts of candy corn and decorating my room with pumpkins and stickers.
“I still celebrate. I didn’t dress up last year. I will probably dress up this year. It’s more like an event now, but less centered on candy,” Gibson said.
With no one here to pin on our tails and draw our whiskers, we have the power to choose whether we are monsters or mice. At college, nobody yanks things from our hands when we’ve had so many we’re sure to be sick. Though we may get into trouble, all we really want is to go back to the Halloween we once knew. Like Alice in Wonderland, we’ve kept the same clothes but grown too big for them. We reach out for our sister’s hand and, finding it gone, we reach for whatever will make us feel safe again.
