The Hairpin Halloween Advent Calendar: Halloween Rituals

It’s our firmly held belief that Halloween is far more important than Christmas, and therefore more deserving of a countdown calendar. It is, after all, the most wonderful time of the year: there are parties and costumes and terrifying things like Martha Stewart, and candy and then more candy and then even more candy, and your ability to consume that much candy is a marvelous thing to behold.

So, in celebration of the Highest of High Holidays, we’re bringing back our Halloween Advent Calendar. We’ll post one or two Halloween-y pieces a day in the 13 days leading up to October 31. Why 13 days? Because 13 is a spoOoOoky number!

The first go around we kicked off the Calendar with a round-up of Halloween Confessions; this time, we’re doing Halloween Rituals. We asked our contributors to share the traditions by which they observe Halloween — current, or past, or even just something they wished they did? We would, of course, loOooOove to hear yours!

Here’s mine: In my younger years, I was a Halloween Party Girl. But as I’ve gotten older and my life has gotten quieter, my Hallowe’en observance runs more toward the domestic. Each year, I put on The Unaired Elvira Show Pilot, sit down on my kitchen floor with a bowl of cocktail peanuts & candy corn (best snack ever, btw) and spend an afternoon carving/crafting various pumpkins. — Jolie Kerr

I’m not sure if this is a Halloween Ritual, but since I can remember I always have a slight moment of panic when leaving the house on Hallowe’en, because there’s always that chance I got the date wrong and I will be the only one in a costume. This was a lot more pronounced when I was in school, because if I showed up to 10th grade dressed as a French Can-Can dancer when everyone else was in normal clothes I probably would have just started screaming and eating my costume off my body until I was granted the freedom of death. — Jaya Saxena

My Halloween ritual for the past couple of years, since my partner and I became Olds, is to have a horror movie marathon with popcorn and hand out candy to the two to three trick-or-treaters who come by. In college, my roommates and I always threw a big party featuring two important refreshments: 1. Cornbread. (What does cornbread have to do with Halloween? I don’t know.) And 2. Vodka-soaked gummy worms. (Once my roommates and I dared each other to do shots of the vodka post-soaking. This is not a good idea. Don’t ever do this.) (My roommate, however, liked it so much that over the course of the night he drank ALL OF IT.) — Lindsay King-Miller

I’ve been in a fine Halloween-ish mood, reading about Bloody Mary because a friend reminded me that we used to do that mirror thing all the time. Another thing I used to do, but by myself, was collect rainwater on Halloween for future use in “potions” which never actually got made. We’d recently moved to Indiana and I was a weird and lonely pre-teen psyched about witchcraft. While I was scooping rainwater off the dogwood tree leaves I wore a long dress and made up chants and was generally pretty spooky about the whole thing. My super-religious parents were a little freaked. — Mary Mann

Halloween has always been an extremely big deal growing up in my household. As a child, I had Halloween parties so scary that parents complained to my own after their children had nightmares. Seriously, if a bunch of second graders can’t handle my father chasing them through the house dressed in a Michael Myers costume then they’re not ready to experience REAL Halloween.

There are a lot of Halloween rituals my family practices (mainly, watching our favorite movies, decorating the house, etc.) but a special one is particularly musical. I grew up in a household of horror film fanatics and my family has had this horror film score compilation for what seems like forever. Starting the beginning of October we begin to play it constantly in preparation for the holiday. Because of this, a lot of my childhood Halloween memories haveliterally been soundtracked to famous scary movie music. I’ve driven to the theme to Psycho (which, not surprisingly, can make you paranoid), hung up decorations listening to “Tubular Bells” from The Exorcist, and just chilled to the theme from Halloween. Listening to these scores in October will make anything you do infinitely creepier. I don’t care what you’re doing, you could be painting your toenails or blogging about Kim Kardashian and you will feel chills doing it to Goblin’s score from Profondo Rosso. Get some creepy tunes on your iPod, stat. — Hazel Cills

Previously: The Hairpin Halloween Advent Calendar: Halloween Confessions