The Best Holiday Ever

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Can we talk for a few minutes about how much I love Halloween? I love everything about it, from the candy and trick-r-treating, to costumes and parties, to horror movies and awesome music. I make it a point to celebrate Halloween hard!
A quick history lesson, Halloween originated as part of a harvest festival based around the Autumnal Equinox. Some parts of what we now call Halloween came from Celtic ritual, like carving scary faces into pumpkins which were set out to scare evil spirits away from your home. Some things came from other festivals like Mexico's Dia de los Muertos, such as dressing in costumes in order to hide from/blend in with the spirits as they walked about on the earth. Today's Halloween is enjoyed very much for fun and holds little to no spiritual value for most people. I mean, it isn't even considered a "National" holiday.

Even if it has been commercialized in true American fashion, I still love it! This year is no exception. I start out my celebration before most. I loaded my over 500 song Halloween playlist onto my iPod at the beginning of September and have been listening to little else since. I've been planning a costume for several months and have been looking forward to my friends' annual costume party since last year's ended!

Another tradition I have started for myself is that every year, my little sister and I have a Scary Movie Marathon, just the two of us. The first year, we watched ghost movies including "White Noise" and "The Ring". The second year was vampires when we watched "The Lost Boys" and "Dracula" with Gary Oldman. Then came the year of zombies including "Shaun of the Dead" and "Evil Dead II". Last year, we watched classic horror movies like "Nosferatu" and "Carnival of Souls". This year, we've picked two modern classics: "Nightmare on Elm Street" (the original, not the remake), and Stanley Kubrick's "the Shining". I'm totally stoked!
Haunted houses and scary make up and ghost stories and horror movie premiers and awesome, spooky house decorations and everything! It just puts a twisted smile on my face!

Speaking of premiers, a side-note about AMC's series "The Walking Dead": HOLY CRAP! That hoard of walkers! And then Sophia! And Carl!! CARL!!! Man was it intense! I was sitting there, literally clutching the sides of my seat, white-knuckled.

Speaking of zombies, a shameless plug:

For the past 4 years in a row, I have organized and hosted a zombie walk in my hometown of Greensboro, NC called the Belligerent Risen Against the Inhuman Nullification of Zombies, or BRAINZ for short. We started our first year with a total of 14 zombies. Last year we had 79. This year marks BRAINZ's 5th deathday and it is going be bigger than ever! We will be raising money for charity, marching around downtown Greensboro, and possibly even more! We are walking on November the 5th, starting at 10:00am on the campus of UNCG. Please feel free to contact me via email at brainz.nc@gmail.com for more information about this most awesome event!

Anyways, I just wanted to rant for a few minutes about how much I love/geek out over Halloween! There are related plans in the works as we speak, but more on that later.

Happy Halloween, everyone!!

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