Reason #7: It's just another excuse for shenanigans.

Why Hallowe'en is a pain in my ass, a thorn in my side, the bane of my existence:

1. in the stores, they start making with the orange and black before summer is EVEN OVER.
2. candy corn: waste of sugar.
3. orange is one of my favorite colors, but if you wear it with black, you're always signaling Hallowe'en, even if you don't want to. Hallowe'en has imposed a color hegemony! Throw off your chains!
   
4. I HATE costumes.
5. I HATE horror, fake, satiric, or otherwise.
6. stupid fake spiderwebbery, dummies with knives stuck in 'em, skeletons of all reports, gravestones, ghostsheetery . . . the Hallowe'en decoration schema, gah.
   
7. just another excuse for shenanigans.
8. waste of perfectly good pumpkins.
9. I have a stick up my rear end? --don't think I haven't considered the possibility.
10. the kids want you to help them be things like Poison Ivy or a Darth Maul (or however you spell it). When I was a kid, you could be these things: Hobo, Gypsy, Little Girl (if you were a bigger girl), Witch. Also Ghost, if there happened to be a spare sheet.
    
11. What if there's a Jazz game on television during the trick or treating?
    
12. I HATE dressing up. Did I already mention this?
13. Frankly, I'm not crazy about other people dressing up--adults, that is. Boo, humbug.
    

I do like: giving the candy out; seeing cute little kids in their cute little costumes; the fact that it's October 31, and therefore right on the cusp of a new month, the change in season, the secular residue of a religious celebration (the eve of All Saints day); eating Bit-o-Honeys, which my kids always disdained and which I remember from my childhood.

And speaking of that, where are the candy cigarettes of yesteryear?