Fall break is over, and you know what that means—Thanksgiving is right around the corner, and the holiday season is close behind. Are those sleigh bells I hear? Well, they can jingle right off, because there’s only one holiday you should care about right now, and that holiday is the “Eight Weeks of Halloween.” Yes, eight. Frankly, anyone who tells you that Halloween is only on one night is a liar, a charlatan and probably someone who uses their Toyota’s backup cam to strategically flatten children’s tricycles. Halloween starts on Sept. 1, which coincidentally marks the day I started wearing this glow-in-the-dark skeleton bodysuit underneath my clothes. Honestly, two months is still barely enough to fully experience all the reasons Halloween is superior to every other holiday, so if you feel that you’ve been missing out, here’s a few of the many features that set Halloween apart.

Music

You know how Christmas songs are cute and festive at first, but then by your second loop of Michael Buble’s classic (and creatively titled) holiday album “Christmas,” you want to bludgeon him to death with a candy cane? That will never happen with Halloween music because folks, it’s bangers all the way down. At this point in the Halloween season, I have logged exactly 666 plays of the Tombstone remix of “Spooky Scary Skeletons,” Andrew Gold’s seminal work and my own favorite song of all time. In fact, I’m listening to it right now, and it sounds exactly as spookily good as it did the first time. But if you want to mix it up a little, you can always turn to the evergreen “Monster Mash,” or any song on the “Nightmare Before Christmas” original soundtrack, except, you know, the ones about Christmas.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6-ZGAGcJrk

Movies

“Halloweentown II: Kalabar’s Revenge.” Your honor, I rest my case.

Aesthetic

You’re walking down a neighborhood street. Everything is still and quiet, except the leaves rustling in the cool night breeze. You see them only as indistinct, smudged-charcoal shapes on the gnarled trees which loom high above you. Only the moon is clear, with every crater and blemish standing out on its round, pale face.
Some of the street’s many windows glow orange; some are as dark and cold as the mouth of a deep, deep cave. Among the shadows that lie thick over the bare yards and porches to your left, a row of jack-o’-lanterns flicker, revealing to you all kinds of strange and otherworldly shapes: a snarling face with rows of sharp teeth; a thin, serpentine shadow passing over a moon made of flame; and…
“Look, that one has Garfield on it.” You scream, jerk away from the soft voice at your ear. Your heart racing, you run blindly into the darkness. The shadows swallow you, and I see you no more. As the frantic pounding of your feet on the cracked sidewalk fades away, I smile.

Food

Listen, I’m Jewish, and I love potatoes more than I love myself, so yes, Hanukkah is one of my all-time favorite holidays. I would eat latkes for every meal, if I thought I could survive for more than a week on a starch-only diet. And yes, Hanukkah food will always make me think of family, warmth and light. On the other hand, though, there’s the feeling I get as soon as I see the candy aisles in CVS start to fill up. It’s the feeling I got from coming home after trick or treating, dumping a sack of candy out on my bedroom floor and trying to make my sister trade me her Kit-Kats for your pretzels. It’s a crisp, perfect fall night, distilled into a $5 bag of assorted Hershey’s Miniatures. Every Crunch bar returns me to my childhood; every piece of candy corn has the bittersweet taste of a joyful, but distant, memory. Not to mention the taste of pouring a tablespoon of undiluted sugar into my mouth. God, I love Halloween.