It’s that time of year again – Halloween, which then turns into a flurry of spend-a lot, eat-a lot holidays that end in a night of drunken debauchery to ring in the New Year.

Halloween is loved by many (it is #2 in most-money-spent holidays) and, in fact, is a source of hefty nostalgia for me.  I will never forget that year that I loved Cheetos so much that my mother made me a Chester the Cheetah costume (which no one understood), only for it to fall apart halfway through trick or treating, leaving me to walk home in the cold, Chicago evening with my underwear on display for all.  Possibly this is why I stopped dressing up and trick or treating relatively early, although after I moved to California in 2000, I began dressing up again.  Particularly when I was at work, this held a number of other memories for me, although I worked in a pharmacy full of customers coming to pick up their Valtrex and Viagra prescriptions.  The classiest thing that came out of a customer’s mouth during those days was when I dressed like a bunny and the old man picking up his wife’s pain meds told me he wanted to see my tail.

Even though I rarely dress up anymore (with, of course, the exception of the occasional sacrilegious costume, such as the one featured on the right sidebar of this very website), I’m still all for a good time.  Who am I to spoil the fun and future nostalgia of others?  But we have to admit that Halloween can also be a little Hallow-Raunchy.

Halloween is a celebration of blood, guts, gore, and all things disgusting

Have any of you faithful blog followers ever taken a walk through the Halloween aisle at Target lately, or worse yet gone to one of those Halloween Express stores that crop up all over town around the middle of September?  When I was little, those places were filled with ghosts and gravestones, now they’re covered in fake blood, zombie brains, and gory body parts.  Whatever happened to the good old days when people decorated with a few innocent spider webs and those fake, plastic spiders?

Carving pumpkins is by far the most disgusting task ever

Carving pumpkins is disgusting from beginning to end.  Not only are pumpkins filled with slimy guts but then when you go through all the effort of carving one, you think you’ll be real inventive and cook the seeds.  Only when you go to get the guts off the seeds, it is by far the most difficult task you will ever partake in.  Carving the designs into the pumpkin is always a pain with those ridiculous cheap tools they sell you at Target as well.  Then within two days (max) of your pumpkin being carved, the thing has turned into a mushy pile of moldy and bacteria.

Over the age of 15, dressing up for Halloween is the same thing as dressing up like a Vegas prostitute

What has happened to Halloween costumes?  I don’t ever remember my parents dressing like prostitutes when I was little, and I almost never saw those college chicks that lived across the street from us dress too skanky either.  Now, over the age of 15, Halloween may just as well be referred to as “Excuse to Dress Like a Hooker Day.”  In recent years, it is gotten obscene – not only tasteless, short skirts and low cut tops, but horrible messages sent with the theme of the costumes.  This year’s absolute worst?  Anna Rexia.  It makes me sick to even see the picture.

And then there are the pedophiles…

You almost wish the Internet weren’t around because then there would be no way for us to all know the exact houses where pedophiles and sex criminals are handing out little chocolate bars to our kids.  Now it seems all Halloween activities are geared towards keeping kids as far away from that as possible.  Of course there is nothing wrong with that at all, in fact, I prefer it; but it begs the question:  if Halloween is the pedophiles Holy Grail, is it really such a great thing anymore?  The truth to the matter is that most reformed sex criminals do not answer their doors on Halloween; the further truth is that if only parents just kept watch over their kids while out trick or treating, none of it would even be a problem.  In our little suburb in California, there are all sorts of community events at churches, block parties in wealthy neighborhoods, and even trick or treating at the mall in an effort to keep kids away from perverts.  But in the end, this is always such an ordeal to be a part of – generally you have to pay or to pitch in, which is so much more than having to hand out some candy and make sure your kids are accompanied by an adult and their candy is checked.  But as people grow more and more afraid of the pedophiles (and so it would seem, less willing to keep watch over their kids through the course of Halloween evening), less traditional trick or treating is even available.

As I said, for me Halloween is a matter of nostalgia.  I have tons of great memories, tons of weird memories, occasional embarrassing moments, and that warm feeling I get every time I hear Linus say “it’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.”  My advise to you, faithful blog followers, to keep your Halloween from becoming a Hallow-Raunchy?  Break out the old Halloween spider webs and flying ghosts and save the body parts for the zombie apocalypse; paint a pumpkin and buy some pre made seeds at the grocery store; if you must dress, dress with a little class (and think of the message Anna Rexia sends); and, last (but most important), put your smartphone down for a couple of hours and just walk your kids from door to door, rather than leaving them open to the perverts or ruining the tradition of Halloween by taking them to the mall.

And if you have any problems with dressing your kid … well, watch this: