It’s August in Texas, which means it is still very much summer. We’re talking triple-digit temperatures, steering wheels hot enough to punish you for touching them, and the kind of humidity where, if you have boobs, the boob sweat is real. If you don’t, I’m sure you’re sweating somewhere else. Either way, nobody is exactly sitting around thinking, “You know what I need right now? A pumpkin.”
So naturally, Halloween is already in stores.
The pumpkins are stacked up, skeletons are hanging from fake porches, and there are candles everywhere that supposedly smell like fall. I know why retailers do it, and every year those displays still make me nostalgic.
I genuinely loved growing up in the 90s, and Halloween was a big part of why. It felt communal, a little cheesy, a little chaotic, and completely unselfconscious. Nobody was trying to make it perfect. We were just having fun, and I think that’s what I miss.
Halloween Was a Neighborhood Thing
Growing up in the 90s, I don’t remember perfectly decorated houses or elaborate Halloween displays. Some neighbors went all out. Others put one plastic pumpkin on the porch and called it done. Someone always had decorations that had clearly been sitting in their garage for 15 years.
Nothing matched, and nobody cared.
You’d walk around with your siblings or friends, figure out which houses had the good candy, compare costumes and eventually dump the entire haul onto the floor at home like you were conducting a financial audit.
The decorations were fun, but the people were the point.
Later, Halloween changed. Instead of trick-or-treating, you were watching movies with friends, carving pumpkins, going to parties, decorating your apartment or taking younger siblings, nieces, nephews or your own kids around the neighborhood.
The details changed. Being together didn’t.
We Don’t Outgrow Traditions
When you’re a kid, traditions happen because someone else makes them happen. Your family buys pumpkins. Somebody puts up the decorations. Hocus Pocus comes on and everyone watches it because that’s what you do around Halloween.
Then you become an adult and realize nobody is organizing this stuff for you anymore.
You have to text the group chat. Buy the pumpkins. Invite people over. Decide that watching Hocus Pocus or Halloweentown on a random Tuesday night absolutely counts as plans.
That’s how adult traditions happen.
Maybe you carve pumpkins with your siblings. Maybe you have friends over every October. Maybe you decorate your house with the same ridiculous skeleton you’ve had for years. It doesn’t need to look good enough for Instagram. It just needs to become something you do together.
I think we spend a lot of time missing the traditions we had growing up without realizing we can make new ones.
Maybe That’s Why I Still Get Excited
I’ll still roll my eyes at Halloween decorations going up while Texas is sitting in the triple digits, but I’ll also stop and look.
Because what I miss isn’t really the 90s. It’s the feeling of belonging to something small and familiar. Friends showing up. Family traditions. The same movies, decorations and rituals coming back every year until they quietly and organically become part of your life as an adult.
Halloween changes as you get older, but it never really has to disappear. You could be eight years old with a plastic pumpkin bucket, sixteen having a sleepover with friends and getting genuinely spooked by The Ring or Signs, or thirty-five standing in your apartment hallway trying to decide which Halloween wreath and doormat combination is the least obnoxious.
The details change, but the good part is still the same. You’re with people you like, doing something a little ridiculous, eating too much candy corn, and giving yourself a reason to get together.
That’s what I love about Halloween. It can meet you wherever you are in life.
You’re still doing the same basic thing.
Finding your people, making some memories and giving yourself something to look forward to next October.
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