The popular image of Halloween is one seen through rose-colored glasses. One often thinks of children dressed in creative costumes going door to door beseeching neighbors for candy bars.
I think candy bars are the last thing on the mind of any student at Fairfield when Halloween rolls around. People here want treats, true, but of a different sort. I bet record amounts of alcohol are consumed by Fairfield students every Halloween, but the parties don’t stop with booze: marijuana and mushrooms are probably tamer examples of Halloween’s drug-addled frenzy, not only at Fairfield, but at institutions of higher learning across the country.
Halloween always has and always will be known for ribald tomfoolery-the holiday was started by the ancient Celts, who dressed up in ridiculous costumes and sacrificed crops and animals in huge bonfires. If one were pressed to think of a modern corollary to slapping on a sheepskin and throwing wheat into a fire, he or she would inevitably be led to the prospect of tripping face on Bellarmine Hill while marveling at the wonders of the night sky.
Again, I would like to make it clear that I don’t partake in or condone activity like this, but I think it would do us all good to take a hard, objective look at modern phenomena like the annual orgy of booze and drugs every Oct. 31. What causes students to figuratively “let go” with such aplomb every year on All Hallow’s Eve?
I place any blame for such activity squarely on the shoulders of America’s parents. Seriously, I remember friends of mine growing up going out on Halloween, egging cars and soaping windows and never getting in trouble for it! Even if they were found out, many parents would shrug off such activity with “Boys will be boys” clichéd dismissals, more so than if their kids had perpetrated such acts on say, June 17 instead of Halloween.
Year after year of such unpunished mischief ingrains in young people a notion that Halloween is justifiably a time for activity that would never normally be excused otherwise. In college, this is played out in the all too familiar boozefests that accompany October’s end.
But I have an excuse. My birthday is Oct. 28, so I guess I’m pretty lucky that the celebration of my birth coincides with some of the loudest, sin-ridden merrymaking the world has ever seen. Or at least that’s what I’ll tell myself any number of times I walk (or stumble) up to a keg this Friday.
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