By: Noeka Nimmervoll, Staff Writer
Halloween just happened, and thank god! I was getting tired of pretending to be a human. Just kidding — but there is something to be said about the creative freedom that Halloween provides. The holiday’s embrace of creativity is evident through its encouragement of costumes, decorations, and spooky events. Through it, we can see that “everyone can be creative.” It’s a fun, limitless holiday. For a few hours, you can be anything you want to be! I’m sorry, what did you say? You’ve shown up to school in a real boat with a cutout, filled with stuffed animals? Your costume was Noah’s Ark? Awesome. It was fun to see!
Expressing yourself is easy on Halloween. The festivities of the holiday make space for us to showcase our creativity without judgment. In fact, the bolder, the better! Halloween is the one time a year when you can wear that exceptionally strange purple striped suit in the back of your closet down the street without anyone batting an eye. No matter how ridiculous your costume is, you’re bound to get more admirers than judges, as long as you commit to the bit. It’s never overdressing if it’s for Halloween. Let your inner monster loose!
Beyond that, we can all work with the theme: spooky scary hilarity. Contrary to popular belief, having a focus is a great way to bolster creativity. Halloween provides a ground to work on, from which you can be inventive with your costume! There are a million and one directions to take Halloween, but you always have the Halloween presence in mind as a starting point — you know you will be around fog and skeletons at some point in the night. If you have no original ideas, you can turn to a basic one and make it your own: a witch costume can be just as good as an original costume idea if you dress it up right.
I feel a little bitter when I think about the fact that I’m no longer cute enough to dress up and ask strangers for free candy. However, there are consolations. You get to express a part of yourself to the world that isn’t always easy to show in everyday life. You can show off your clown makeup. You can carve a brilliant jack-o’-lantern. You can throw a ghoul-themed party. There is much less that you can’t do than what you can do during this holiday, and isn’t that what creativity is all about?
