As I sit here in recovery mode from yet another wild Halloween, I can confidently say that it's the greatest holiday ever invented. If I had one word to describe it: NIPTASTIC. Fantasy and Nips mixed together into a night of pure mischief and delight.
"I love Halloween and I've got 10 nips of Cutty Sark in my pants."
As I stumbled down the street in the cool autumn air, proudly dressed in my skin tight Bat Man costume, gently tugging on a tightly rolled joint, I realized that it’s not only the best holiday, but maybe also the most underrated holiday of all.
Underrated? Why underrated? Great question. Let me try to explain...
Fun people get it. For fun people, it's the best holiday created and it's fairly rated as the most perfect and absolute best holiday. It's clean and simple and the best damn night of the whole year. Act like a lunatic. Wear a mask. Purge. Make bad decisions. Take on an alternate persona. Pretend you're Bat Man saving the city. Drunk as a skunk. Bravo, Halloween. Bravo.
"If only I could be more like Bat Man in real life.."
But for all the rest of those people out there, you know, the ones we aren't so sure about. Well, for them, there's a lot of anxiety and fear and worry and 'oh no, you're going to stay up too late, drink yourself into oblivion, costume might not look sexy enough, miss your morning meeting, blah blah wah wah wah.' That's where this underrated rating comes from.
"Guys, I don't think I wanna go out for Halloween..."
There's a huge cross section of the population that just doesn't get Halloween and all the amazingly bad decisions that can be made without any real consequences. And I'm writing this post today to rally these people to realize that Halloween is a truly NIPTASTIC holiday and I'd like to properly quantify the holiday with real math. Real science here. Good old fashioned Pro's and Con's, so that these people on the wrong side of the fence can jump over that fence and get on the side that thinks that Halloween is the greatest holiday of all time, especially if you want to drink 10 nips of Cutty Sark and fall over a fence in your neighbor's yard pretending to save the city.
Let's first weigh the Pro's. You get to dress up as anything you want, eat candy, scare people, play pranks, smoke joints, carry open containers and get hammered. (As a footnote- later in the night during our trick or treating session, I abruptly learned it's actually not okay to carry open containers or smoke joints in public on Halloween. Or any night rather. At least in the fine state of Massachusetts. Luckily, the cop was an old high school pal of mine and he looked like he'd been pulling at the bottle a bit himself as he let me off and sped away in hot pursuit of some young hoodlums hurling rotten eggs.) As I quickly sobered up from my near run in with the law, I watched the flashing lights disappear on the horizon and swapped out my solo cup of Witches' Brew (equal parts Absinthe, Everclear and Mountain Dew) for an ice cold nip of Cutty Sark. The moment I cracked the metal cap of the palm sized delicious nip, my son and his friends realized I had fallen behind and pierced the night air with 'Daaaaa-aaaad, let's goooo-oooooooo! Come ooo-oooooon!' C'mon Bat Man, you can do this, I said to myself as I ran to catch up with the crew.
This guy loves good music and Halloween. He gets it.
What a night. Only on All Hallows Eve! Parents and children! United as one! Finally! To conquer and pillage and capture the most candy and largest buzz possible. Me 1. Cutty Sark 0. I slammed the empty nip into the trash barrel and wondered if Bat Man ever dabbled in nips as he conquered his evil rivals tearing up Gotham. Every night's Halloween if you're Batman. What a lucky bastard.
Anyway, to summarize, Pro's for Halloween- you can do almost anything you want and you can rally with your kids to consume everything in sight in massive quantities... rather than yell at them about everything that they do.
And now for the Con's of Halloween. The candy. The leftover candy. The candy that you find that's been hidden. The hidden candy that you re-hid after you found the originally hidden candy. Can I really eat another Kit Kat? The wrappers. The proof is everywhere. I'm a tubby piece of crap. Next week health kick. Woah, where'd this bag of candy come from? Ok a few more Starburst. Wow, I didn't think I liked Butterfinger. December. That's my month. Health kick.
It’s also truly NIPTASTIC because of how it evolves as you get older. As a kid, you would sprint from house to house and pick the best neighborhoods to optimize your candy collection. As an adult you'd optimize your night around the best parties to hit and how many nips you can fit in your skin tight Bat Man Costume.
In summary, just so we are clear, Halloween is a religious holiday. Halloween is ‘All Hallow’s Eve’. The night before ‘All Hallow’s Day’ which is a day dedicated to remembering the dead. At least this holiday has kept traditions like trick or treating and the spooky/afterlife décor of skulls/skeletons, and bats….. not like Christmas which somehow got a red nosed reindeer involved and a jolly old fat man named Santa, who comes down your chimney…… which is just ridiculous. God, I'm hungover. Happy Halloween and until next year.
Your partner in crime,
Bat Man
PS Order some NIPYATA! Products. Those other shittier holidays will be here before you know it. Stock up early.
