For roughly a decade of my life, Halloween was my favouritest holiday ever. Beat out Christmas every year. But it’s sad now, because no one over the age of 12 understands what the true meaning of Halloween is. So let me tell you what the true meaning of Halloween is.

The true meaning of Halloween is trick or treating. Everything else is irrelevant.

Halloween isn’t about eating healthy. That’s just retarded. Every time I hear about some idiot “health expert” warning parents of Halloween treats, I want to kill somebody’s dog to get an erection. Yes, kids are getting fatter and stupider with every day. But it’s not because they eat a couple of (dozen) candy bars on Halloween – it’s because you idiot parents feed them McDonald’s the other 364 days of the year and their soulless after-school cartoons imported from Japan don’t teach them that knowing is half the battle. Children have insane metabolisms. One night of wanton sugary debauchery will not last into the next day. An upset stomach or possible nightmare about a wish granting monkey paw at the worst.

Halloween is about trick or treating. And trick or treating is about candy. What’s all this stupidness about giving out healthy treats? Granola bars? Boxes of raisins? Packs of mini-rice cakes? Apples!?! Man, what the hell you doing giving out apples to kids? If you give kids apples, they’ll just throw it against your stupid house. I was listening to the radio today, and some “children’s health expert” told parents to go down to the dollar store and get some Halloween stickers to give to trick or treaters instead. What the fuck is a kid going to do with Halloween stickers!?!

Asking parents to give out healthy alternatives to candy is like asking people to give socks to kids as Christmas presents. Or going to KFC for Thanksgiving. Or dressing up as a giant egg laying leporine monster for Easter. It’s just stupid.

And no, despite popular opinion, Halloween isn’t some glorified excuse to cosplay for a day. No, Halloween costumes are only for facilitating the trick or treating. Because if you go trick or treating without a costume, you’re a fucking dumbass. People keep dressing up for Halloween, and over time when they get too old to trick or treat, but they still dress up because they don’t know what else to do. You can’t hate cosplayers for January through October, then go cosplaying yourself on Halloween, and then go back to hating cosplayers for November and on. For the record though, The WAMBAG does not condone cosplay hating. In fact, we actually heartily condone all cosplaying in general, and are in fact cosplay lovers, not cosplay haters. Just like how Street Fighter is a great movie, as opposed to a bad one.

And no, Halloween isn’t All Hallow’s Eve, the most magical day of the year, when the veil between this world and the next is at its thinnest, or any other of that weird ass dark/evil/gothic stuff. Because that’s just stupid.

No, Halloween is about running around from house to house in the chilly autumn air, running through people’s gardens because it’s faster that way, and seeing who can jump over the highest bush on the way to the next door. It’s about wearing a stupid rubber mask on your face because fuck it, you just can. It’s about childhood innocence, enjoying yourself before your life is ruined by words you don’t even know the meaning of, like “midterm” or “Chlamydia”. It’s about meeting up with other bands of trick or treaters, to compare stashes, and to share tactical layouts of visited neighbourhoods – which houses give out full-sized chocolate bars, and which houses give out raisins or those no name Halloween candies that no one ever eats. It’s about knowing which houses you should visit first, because they have the best loot, so you can double back on them at the end of the night after they’ve forgotten you. It’s about visiting the houses that give out cans of pop last, because goddamn those babies are heavy. It’s about returning home with the bounty of the hunt, weighing each bag to see who got the most goodies. It’s about dumping all your candy out on the living room floor, sorting them into categories of chocolates, lollipops, chips, fruit gummies, and shit no one wants that is given out to late trick or treaters that ring your doorbell. It’s about trading all your gum balls to the one kid that likes them for actual candy, like Crunch or Kit Kat bars or those slices of gummy fruit with sugar and stuff on them that no one knows the name of. It’s about eating enough candy to make yourself sick, and then eating some more just because you can, but not because you want to. It’s about saving the best stuff for later in your sock drawer, only to realize ten months later that yes, candy can go bad. And Halloween is about how some things only happen once a year, for only a couple years of your life, and how you have to learn to enjoy limited occasions like that because you’ll never get them again when you grow up.

Halloween’s about a lot of things, but no one actually seems to know what they are. But kids do. So enjoy it, you stinky rat bastards. Enjoy it because you’ll never enjoy it again. Such is life.