This Halloween I dressed up as Sally from The Nightmare Before Christmas. The title of this post is a deliberate play on The Nightmare Before Christmas, which was about people from a world about Halloween invading a world about Christmas (and alludes to the fact that I was too busy enjoying Halloween to post). Perhaps it is not appropriate to add a bit of Halloween to Christmas. However, I think we should all add a bit of Christmas to Halloween.
People say that we should treat every day as if it were Christmas, giving freely (of not just candy) and with a joyful heart. Everyone seems to get in on the fun, even non-Christians.
To a Goth, every day is Halloween, and we are free to be ourselves without worrying about what other people think, even if sometimes that means our employers. However, not everyone gets in on the fun with Halloween. There is that attitude that there is a certain age at which one should quit celebrating Halloween. I agree that it might be inappropriate for a 40-year-old to ask for candy, but that certainly does not prevent his or her ability to dress up (or down).
As for the word “dream” in the title, “dream” has multiple meanings. First, there is the real dream one has at night. I sometimes remember multiple dreams per night every night. They are always figurative and metaphorical, hard to decipher without some help. So in applying that idea here, I think Halloween represents our collective ability to feel safe being ourselves among coworkers and other judgmental adults. Goths should never work in a place that does not celebrate Halloween. If we do not feel safe, then we live in a nightmare.
“Dream” can also imply something wonderful, marvelous, spectacular, like paradise on earth. I feel that if we were able to make the world a safer place for fellow Goths, that we would indeed be living a paradise on earth. I am fortunate that for the first time in my life I started a new job around Halloween. The first impression I made was that this is the real me (what you see is what you get), and the specialness of that one day in the year made it possible for my true Goth self to continue flourishing and blooming even within a white-collar environment.
I did not have to sacrifice a good paycheck for the ability to be myself. Now that is a dream come true!
Lavoce: We Are People Too, Inc. 