I love halloween. I think it's my favorite holiday.
The thing that I like about it the most is that it's one of the only days of the year where you have a reason to go out and meet all of your neighbors. I spent a while last night walking around the neighborhood with Theo and Brieza, having conversations with my nearest neighbors, most of whom I hadn't spoken to before (we've lived in our current place for just over a year). It was really nice.
If you think about it, it's kind of astonishing the extent to which we typically don't know our neighbors. I can't speak for everyone, everywhere, but it seems like a reasonably safe bet that most of us don't know the vast majority of people who live within a one-block radius of us.
Why is that?
To some extent, it's probably a deeply rooted sense of fear and privacy.
But I suspect it's also a practical matter -- there just aren't convenient, socially fluid (i.e., non-awkward) ways to connect with your neighbors. That's part of why Halloween is so great. It's a fun, easy, light-touch excuse to walk around and say hi to everyone. No big commitment, no awkward over-staying the moment. In the best case, just enough connection to reasonably say hi to someone next time you see them on the street. For sure this is not a whole lot, but it's a whole lot more than normal.
