Halloween is a perfect holiday. There are minimal rules or familial obligations. You get to wear whatever your little freak heart desires. The food is treat-centric. Thus it only makes sense to celebrate in the perfect location: at home.
There ain’t no party like an at-home party because an at-home party stops exactly when you want it to. From the comfort of your own living room, you can create the perfect Halloween ambience. Every song? Thematic. The candy? Kit Kats, Reese’s Peanut Butter Pumpkins, and Twizzlers Bites — three perfect treats. You think licorice is gross? Good! You will not be eating any because it will be at home with me. Let me eat my yuck candy and listen to Nicki Minaj’s verse on “Monster” 13 times in a row in peace.
At home, you needn’t stand in line with white men in sombreros to get a $13 vodka soda. You don’t have to wait outside an occupied bathroom for 25 minutes, biding your time by watching the tiny box TV in the corner of the bar playing The Amityville Horror on mute. There is no need to explain your very good costume to inebriated strangers like, “Okay, so remember when there was a big boat that got stuck? I’m that but sexy.” In fact, there is no need to explain your costume to anyone at all.
“But no one will even see my very good costume!” you say. Wrong! Have you ever heard of a little thing called posting a drunk Instagram Story by yourself and then deleting it in the morning? What about answering the door for Postmates while dressed as a Disney Channel star from the aughts? Not to mention trick-or-treaters! When else can you, dressed as a character from Squid Game, give a fun-size Snickers to a child-size Iron Man?
At home, the mechanics of your costume can be as complicated as you see fit. Your shoes can be as impractical as you please. You can dress for the Halloween weather you want, not the Halloween weather we have, and you don’t have to worry about how you’re going to ride the subway or fit in a Lyft or dance in a way that doesn’t make your costume fall apart. No worries. No stress. No last-minute panic about having to find something, anything, to turn into a recognizable costume. Just you, dressed as a horse, vibing to the masquerade-ball scene in A Cinderella Story.
Think of all the Halloween TV episodes you can watch! The scary movies you can half pay attention to while scrolling through Instagram waiting to see if Kylie Jenner will be half-naked and covered in blood for Halloween as well. Think about how glad you will be at 1 a.m. when you are at home popping Twizzlers Bites instead of inside a Taco Bell among a graveyard of melted Halloween costumes trying not to spill Crunchwrap on your sexy Bernie Sanders outfit.
Also there’s technically still a pandemic happening. If anything is scarier than Halloween, it’s having to explain that you got COVID-19 while dressed as the puppet baby from Annette.