Too Easy

So.

We’re not sure if this is a replica of Martha Stewart’s skull, or if it is just a Martha-Stewart-branded skull. What we do know is that it’s a skull decoration with faux-flame lights in the eyes that cast a murky glow… from Martha Stewart. Leave it to Martha to make a skull chic — with a little help from the fake-flame masters at Luminara.

And, in consideration of this, I just have to ask: has Halloween gotten too easy?

Let me confess something before we move forward. I’m not a Halloween-obsessed weirdo and never have been. I enjoy the fall, the cool air, the occasionally dreary weather. I like to read a spooky book, maybe, something that grapples with the eeriness of the unknown. But Halloween and everything that comes with it? It’s fun enough, and I don’t judge anyone who enjoys it all, but it’s really just not my thing.

Thus, when I ask that question–has Halloween gotten too easy?–I ask it in earnest.

Because the Halloween-obsessed weirdos of yesteryear? They had to WORK for it.

They made their own decorations: creepy striped sweaters and jeans filled with straw, topped with a Freddy Krueger mask, sitting on a lawn chair on the roof; hand-painted styrofoam grave stones; biology-class skeletons digging their way out of the flower beds. They’d miss 4th of July barbecues to work on their costume. And if you went to their costume party without one of your own, you spent the night collecting sighs of disapproval. Or worse, if you tried to claim you came in “costume” as yourself, you might, in fact, get beaten up.

And the movies. Dear god, the movies. They’d line up 31 of the absolute sickest pieces of cinema ever created, one for each night of October. Weird Italian horror, 60s and 70s exploitation stuff, straight-to-video slashers from the 80s and 90s, and just about all of them little more than a series of gruesome executions, mostly of teens played by 30-year-olds who had committed vile crimes such as going to parties and being vaguely promiscuous.

Now, you can get all manner of ridiculous bullshit for your yard at Home Depot, and there’s a Spirit Halloween in every dead mall. Go to the movie theater, and the only thing you can see besides superhero stuff and reboots of old IPs are A24-style horror films that are basically a parade of scenes where random creepy shit happens and when you’re done, you go online and read about how, actually, wow, it was a heartbreaking metaphor for toxic masculinity.

But again, maybe I’m just a Halloween non-enjoyer who’s being cynical.

So Halloween people out there, please buy a skull and then let me know: has it gotten too easy?