With Halloween around the corner, it comes time to celebrate a holiday that drips with mischief and fun. In elementary school, we would dress up, donning the costumes of our favorite characters and things, proudly parading them around school on October 31st. Later, we would go trick-or-treating, excitedly knocking on doors and sorting our candy into piles, negotiating trades for our favorites.
In Evanston, celebrating Halloween is just a part of tradition. Some neighborhoods in Evanston go all out, choosing to deck out their houses with giant skeletons, colored lights and sprawling webs, handing out full-sized candy bars to trick-or-treaters.
“Evanston is a great Halloween Town. A lot of neighborhoods really get behind it, it’s one of the best nights of the year,” Mr. Belgrade, an English teacher and Halloween fanatic, explains.
For ETHS students, Halloween’s different from how it used to be when we were younger. Although we might still dress up, we don’t go door-to-door collecting treats anymore. However, that doesn’t mean that ETHS students don’t still love to celebrate Halloween.
“For Halloween, I usually hang out with my friends, watch scary movies and eat candy with them. It’s really fun because it’s a very social time of year, and Halloween is the perfect ending to the fall spooky season,” Gemma Callam, senior, says.
Despite Evanston’s considerable Halloween spirit these days, ETHS didn’t always allow students to dress up in their funniest or scariest looks. Through the 80s and 90s, costumes weren’t allowed.
“For a long time, that kind of stuff (costumes) was banned. We couldn’t wear hats or anything like that. The whole thing was on lockdown,” Mr. Walsh, a teacher and 1990 alum, recalls.
Costumes weren’t allowed at ETHS until 2017, when the dress code was changed. This gave students more liberties when it came to dressing up, and as long as they didn’t bring a prop weapon or cover their face in paint or a mask, they were free to come dressed as whatever they liked.
“If dressing up is what makes kids happy, that’s what we’re here for. I mean, we’re here to learn, but I’m down with all the fun stuff. I’m down with all the celebratory stuff. I’m here for it 100%,” Ms. Boyd, Director of Alumni Relations, declares.
“I choose to dress up because I love getting an excuse to dress in a way I don’t normally and wear a fun outfit or do interesting makeup,” Amia Huber, senior, explains.
Although students weren’t always able to wear costumes in the past, it didn’t stop some from choosing tricks instead of treats.
“It was Halloween, and I remember hearing a commotion in the hallway. A dude wearing a full banana outfit was running down the hall. Two seconds later, around the corner came a kid dressed as a gorilla, chasing the banana. It was wildly entertaining. The whole hallway fell apart laughing, but they got in trouble because we weren’t supposed to wear costumes back then,” Walsh fondly recalls.
Halloween doesn’t just have to be a holiday for only young kids–it can be something we appreciate when we’re older, too, a day where we take ourselves a little less seriously.
It’s best put by Ms Boyd, “We work so hard, so we have to play hard too. Especially now in this climate, you need reasons to celebrate. You need reasons to smile.”
