Letter from the Editor: Why October lets us take a break from adulting

One of the best smells ever is the mountain of candy you collect on Halloween. That mix of chocolate and caramels with notes of Laffy Taffy and watermelon Jolly Rancher is something we should bottle up and spritz behind our ears. I haven’t smelled that smell in years, since I guess it’s kind of weird for adults to go trick-or-treating if they’re not taking a kid with them. (And even then it’s not like grown-ups are holding out their Jack O’Lantern buckets. WAH.) You can totally buy bags of assorted candies, but it’s just not the same. You can’t replicate that hard-earned Halloween loot.

I’m not the only one who’s nostalgic. You, our wonderful and smart HelloGiggles readers, flock to our site every year for Halloween content, and we even have tools that show which articles you’re loving the most (one of our most popular articles last year was when Dita Von Teese dressed up as a “normal girl,” and it was unsurprisingly divisive).

There’s something pretty magical and time machine-y about Halloween. It takes us back to our childhood and lets us stay there for a while. All month long, we stroll through the Halloween aisle at Target, we buy bags of candy and stash them in our work tote bags, we visit pumpkin patches on Sunday afternoons and take selfies in that glow-y, orange light that’s better than any filter Instagram has to offer. We gather our friends and pets and re-watch horror flicks and beloved Disney Channel classics like Hocus Pocus. For one whole month, we are allowed these tiny moments of escapism. For maybe hours or minutes at time, we can put grown-up life on hold. You can answer that email from your boss after you watch Friday the 13th on TV. You can take your kid to a haunted hay ride for the first time and live vicariously through them as they jump and scream and laugh. For date night, you can carve a pumpkin.

Here at HG, we’ll be celebrating Halloween all month long, so if you need a little extra dose of October magic, you’ll know where to find us.