Autumn Grayson says:

My parents were more in line with the idea that horror is bad and that many aspects of Halloween glorify messed up things. As a kid I tended to agree with them because I didn’t like the particular kind of fear horror gave me, and I preferred the Fall Festivals over trick or treating anyway. But as an adult I have a more complex view. There are many different types of horror, and many ways people engage with the genre, so it’s not just a matter of people reveling in slasher gore for bad reasons. It’s still not my favorite holiday or genre, but now and then I can enjoy certain stories even when they’re technically labeled ‘horror’.

Another thing to note is that people say we should always avoid scary stories because God didn’t give us a spirit of fear, but a lot of people avoid horror BECAUSE they don’t know how to handle fear. I’m not at all saying that people NEED to engage with horror, but people should probably ask themselves if they’re facing, understanding, and overcoming their fears — or merely avoiding them to make themselves feel better.

It’s probably not healthy to flippantly label things as flippant, either. My family always decorated for Fall, never Halloween. But now and then my Dad and I would joke about what phrase or saying we would put on our gravestones. Mine was ‘I tried.’ Maybe people would hear our jokes and assume we were being flippant about our own deaths, but we weren’t. Our gravestone phrases have a lot of layers of meaning to them that are important to us as individuals. From my comments about what the Peter Pan story meant to me, it should be clear that I do take death seriously. But even though I joke about saying ‘I tried’ on my gravestone, it’s not said just to be funny. It’s also venting some of my own sadness and bitterness about certain things. Humor is often a communication tool, and a lot of comedians talk about things in their performances precisely BECAUSE the issue is important to them.

I’m the kind of person that can easily get accused of being overly serious at times, but often enough we face problems when we are constantly forced to deal with serious issues in a serious manner. Recently I was listening to one comedian, and he pointed out how tense everything was getting and saying that we need to let some of the air out of the balloon, so to speak. He was noting how much we were at each others’ throats after 2020 and kind of making the point that it’s only going to get worse if we don’t calm down and defuse some of the tension. And one of the main functions of humor is to defuse that kind of dangerous tension.

Humor is very easy for people to misinterpret, though, especially now days. A lot of times when people hear laughter in proximity to something they care about, they automatically assume that someone is being hateful or disregarding something serious. People often get angry instead of listening to the point that is actually being made. So we should be careful when assuming someone’s attitude and reasons for things. Driving by people’s lawn ornaments doesn’t give us the whole picture of their view on death, just as an individual performance from a comedian doesn’t necessarily tell us their entire view on life.