Halloween. The brisk autumn air. Running door to door with friends, trying to make it around the neighborhood at least twice this year. The old pillowcase slowly filling up with a variety of candy. Getting to the house you know has king size candy bars. Coming back home and dumping the pillowcase onto the living room floor and taking an inventory on how much candy there is. Trading a Heath bar in return for a KitKat to the parents who are too oblivious to realize how unfair the trade was. Eating candy with friends. Then falling asleep in a pile of candy wrappers while still in costume.

This is the Halloween of our childhood. It was amazing and magical. We thought it would never end. And then we hit our teens. Trick or Treating was labeled as “lame”. The Halloween we thought we would always have was now being sabotaged just because of the fact that teenagers don’t look as cute in a costume as they did in the first grade.

If we have to throw all of our childhood Halloween traditions away because of our age what do we have left? What is Halloween supposed to consist of now that we are teenagers? Can Halloween ever be the same as when it was when we were younger?

Maybe it can’t.

“It was so exciting to think that something magical or scary could happen [when I was a kid] but as you get older you know that’s not exactly the truth,” sophomore Angela Griffin said.

She says that it gets to be more of a burden of stress than fun when you get older. It is stressful to think of what to dress up as. Or whether or not people are going to judge us for showing up at their doorstep dressed up as a whoopie cushion asking for candy.

“When I was younger I could dress up as weirdly as I wanted and no one cared. Actually I still do that, but dressing up like that was not frowned upon when I was 8,” Junior Moira Quinn said.

So is not caring the answer? Should we continue on with our childhood traditions even though we might be judged?

With many other things in life, caring what others think is not the answer. Who cares if people think we are weird for trying to keep our childhood memories of Halloween alive. So go out there. Put that weirdly awesome Halloween costume and run house to house getting tons of candy. It is the spirit of Halloween, so why should age be able to restrict it?

It is impossible to outgrow the spirit of Halloween.

Freshman Devon Graham said, “I honestly don’t know how you can outgrow dressing up like whoever you want and getting free candy.”