Halloween+Parade

Students rejoice: the Halloween parade is here Colin Carr ’08

There is one time of year in which the entire body, regardless of their schedule, gets excited to arrive at school as early possible. This is on Halloween, on the day of the parade. Early arrivers get to observe the seniors’ costumes and await their voyage around the school grounds. On this journey, seniors give candy to their younger peers, often leaving a trail of sweets behind them for scavengers to gather afterwards. Be it because of the costumes, the candy, or the overall mayhem, the Halloween parade is an event that students remember for the rest of the year. “There’s a lot of competition involved, for who can get the most candy,” says Sophomore Molly Tetrault. “This makes it really intense. I’m going to get to school as early as I can. I’ll want to see which seniors have the most candy on them so I can keep an eye on that person.” Not all students find Tetrault’s methods to be helpful, however. Senior Nat Bennink recalls having had a different method of collecting candy on parade day: “The seniors just aren’t reliable enough so I never bothered begging them for candy. I’d wait until the parade was over and collect candy off the floor. Some of it was kind of dirty so I wouldn’t touch it but there was a lot. They’d tend to drop candy all over the place.” Seniors must provide the candy but they get a more a more exciting benefit from the parade. Many seniors spend their first three years of high school dwelling on the day they will unveil their masterpiece costume. Some seniors see it as an opportunity to throw a goofy outfit together but many come up with surprisingly creative ideas. Last year, several students united under one particularly unusual costume: a bed. “I’m doing a group costume this year” says Virginia Hamilton. “I’m not allowed to reveal what it is but we’ve spent hours making it and it will be very impressive.” On the other end of the spectrum, the day before the parade, Jack Tracy remains unsure as to what his costume will be, “I might just get a kid’s size Darth Vader costume and see if I can fit in it. I think that’ll be amusing.” The parade clearly provides the student body with opportunities to be goofy, creative, mischievous, and stuffed with candy. As senior Zach Kuperstein puts it, “it’s just the right way to kick off November.”

Candy connoisseurs unite Colin Carr ’08 The Halloween parade is a time for creative costume lovers to express themselves. It is also a time for candy lovers to appreciate a wide variety of their favorite treats. In the spirit of this sugar-high holiday, many students must decide what candies they will hunt down with particular interest. Asking around the student body, one notices certain brands that are mentioned constantly: Reese’s, Milky Way, and Snickers seem to be the champions. “The peanut butter inside the Reese’s cup is so tasty,” says Senior Sophie Hansen. “It’s beyond addicting. That’s why Reese’s Fast Break is so delicious as well. Really, they could make practically anything with that peanut butter and still have it be good.” Not everyone sees Reese’s as the best candy, however. Junior Ben Young claims that Snickers is the best of the bunch. “Reese’s is tasty but it’s too simple. It doesn’t have the variety of the peanuts and the nougat and the caramel. There are just more elements in a Snickers.” Young’s senior brother Matthew begs to differ, “There are plenty of amazing candies but none are as good as the Midnight version of the Milky Way. That’s just the classiest candy.” The Milky Way Midnight bar consists of similar ingredients to the regular version but with dark chocolate. When asked which candies they felt to be inferior, many students called Three Musketeers and Almond Joy as being the weak links in the candy enterprise. “Three Musketeers is the most boring candy of all”, complains senior Jesse Resnick. “All it has is chocolate and this bland pasty filling.” The filling he refers to consists of chocolate-flavored nougat. Hansen sees Almond Joy as being far worse, “No one wants almonds to be the main attraction of the candy. They’re just boring.” While the candy festivities may seem lighthearted, the student body is clearly approaching them with a decidedly critical eye.

The values of Halloween and the parade Colin Carr ’08 Many people look at Halloween as an ultimately superficial holiday. They resent the fact that a holiday that values goblins, ghouls, and unhealthy receives more media attention than holidays based on great historic accomplishments and moral values. Of course, these critics are virtually all adults, who cannot understand the importance that this holiday holds to a child. Whether high-minded adults like it or not, children do have a fascination with the macabre and the spooky. Halloween is a night in which the streets fill with a sense of mischief and danger. It is an atmosphere that is delightful for children but it frightens adults that such delight can be gained from a sense of dread and terror. They feel that children should be taught only to enjoy atmospheres of warmth and cheer and that glorifying the sense of dread that Halloween epitomizes will give children a negative worldview. These fears are understandable but they ignore the fact that Halloween’s atmosphere of pumpkins, witches, and ghosts, while thrilling to a toddler, is harmlessly hokey. It does not teach children to have a love for dread and negativity; instead, it caters to a visceral and entirely human fascination with the morbid and the mysterious. This fascination is a basic part of growing up. Halloween prepares toddlers for the elementary school fascination with Scooby-Doo, which, in turn, prepares them for the middle school fascination with Edgar Allen Poe. This interest never goes away so it might as well be addressed early in the child’s life, in a silly and festive manner. But there is another value of Halloween. While it was originally a Christian holiday, the eve of All Saints’ Day, its ties to religion have been severed in the public eye by millions of horror films, Halloween costumes, and television shows. It is now an entirely corporate holiday, fixated on parents to spend money on costumes and candy. This may seem negative but it has a societal benefit. In a country where people are divided by their religious beliefs, Halloween represents a celebration that all children can take part in. It is the one holiday just superficial to bring everyone together. There are many holiday I cannot celebrate with all of my friends because of our different cultural backgrounds. Halloween is one of the few times we can all come together. The high school is right to acknowledge the value of this Holiday. The parade is the seniors’ way of celebrating the last Halloween they’ll ever have in Wellesley. It is a way of saying goodbye to the days of roguish juvenile frivolity. May the tradition last forever.