Can someone put together a universal theory for why Tumblr loves Halloween to a fault but hates Christmas
Tumblr skews young, Halloween spent with friends, Christmas with family.
Tumblr skews young, more users want to fuck monsters than want to fuck Santa.
I have an actual theory behind this, but I won’t be able to articulate it well until I read Bakhtin and maybe some of the medieval peasant-culture anthro stuff, so I’ve been putting it off. The short of it though is: Halloween is Mardi Gras, while the “holiday season” is Lent. Christmas however is not Easter; the closest equivalent to Easter is the day after Christmas, when you are no longer exposed to Christmas shit and you can maybe get a day off if you work retail.
Over the course of my lifetime Halloween has transmuted very noticeably into a kind of peasant carnival. I think this is because its colonization by commercial forces focused entirely on trick-or-treating, and its religious associations are nonexistent here, so above trick-or-treating age it was left completely to “the folk” to do what they wanted with.
Basically there’s two distinct elements to modern Halloween: the first is that it acts out, and thereby creates, a sense of mastery over and comfort amidst the anxieties of life – death, and monsters, and horror, and so forth. These are several steps removed from the actual sources of people’s fears, but they represent them. The posture of being at home, amongst family, in the company of death and horror is a way of grappling with the senseless horror of life.
The second aspect is that Halloween flouts the pieties of conventional society, whereas Christmas embodies them. Therefore, Christmas is the anti-Halloween. Since it’s America, bland corporate pleasantries and hyperconsumerism are themselves pieties, and as more and more of the population shifts into the service sector, the number of people who experience those things like an imposition from on high increases. The reason everyone starts celebrating Halloween as early as possible, yet dreads when the same thing happens at Christmas, is because Christmas is a “high” holiday that embodies the norms and culture of the upper-middle-class. Halloween is a vulgar party whereas Christmas is a
genteel
sermon; the commercialization of Christmas only changes the church and God.
My theory: it’s the creator vs curator debate.
Halloween involves making things and performing weirdness publicly, Christmas involves paying money to hope you guessed correctly about someone else’s preferences.
also we’re all broke and at least in my clusterfuck of a family there’s a competitive aspect to gift giving that provokes low-grade anxiety until it’s over.
There’s a certain breakdown into obligation vs choice going on as well. Halloween is very much your decision about if you want to go at it and, if so how much, and who you want to spend it with. Xmas is all about feeling an obligation to participate, having specific people you are obliged to see, and no option.
Xmas is supposed to celebrate generosity and community but plays out more like compelled tribute under duress. Halloween afik is supposed to just be a big blow out and maybe pagan tribute but ends up far more in the spirit of real generosity and community,
one of my fav things about Halloween is waiting for Neil Patrick Harries and his husband David’s picture of them and their twins, Harper and Gideon, in their Halloween costumes because…
LOOK AT THESE, this is legit artwork!!
the 2018 one have dropped and OH MY FREAKING GOD look at this!!
YOU MISSED A FEW, THEY WIN HALLOWEEN EVERY DAMN YEAR
These are great items because they’re fun for the herbivores to each, the carnivores to tear apart, and everybody to roll and throw around. They’re tactile, olfactory, and edible enrichment all in one!
I believe they’re acceptable on-exhibit enrichment for naturalistic facilities like Brookfield in Chicago, too.
The time our entire design class dressed up for Halloween as the design teacher (who notoriously almost only wore grey sweaters and always had a cafeteria coffee in hand).
I remember him walking down a super long empty hall and we all just turned the corner at the other end and started running towards him and he ran away yelling “FUcK YOU GUYS” and in retrospect I almost can’t believe he didn’t suffer a heart attack.
Pretty sure we won a pizza party for best costume that year.
IVE SEEN THIS ABOUT TEN TIMES AND IM JUST NOW NOTICING THAT THE ACTUAL TEACHER IS IN THE PICTURE TOO
Queer Fiction Writer 