Shun me. But, in all honesty, I hate Halloween.

Maybe, like our parents and teachers have always said, “hate” is too strong of a word, but if I don’t hate it, I certainly strongly dislike the holiday.

It’s not that I’ve ever had a bad Halloween. I have 32 sweet teeth. I watch old “Criminal Minds” episodes on rain Saturday nights. My costume closet/repertoire isn’t empty.

It’s the hype of Halloween, which always feels the same as that of a hurricane that never actually makes landfall or an ice storm that’s all rain.

With the letdown after the planning costumes, group plans, multiple evenings, drama and hubbub that all have to be addressed during midterms, it never feels worth it. It’s stress I’ve never made time for. Most years, I give it 10 minutes of thought the Tuesday before and this year is no different.

In earlier years, however, I loved Halloween.

I didn’t want to be the cutest, scariest or coolest. I was always for being the most original and my parents always came through. How many other Jewish kindergartners were Santa Claus, complete with a beard and a toy sack for my candy?

In fifth grade, a catalog came in the mail that had a child size Regis Philbin costume, straight out of “Who Wants to be a Millionaire.” Obviously, I had to have that costume, complete with a mask. (Thinking back, that might have been the creepiest.)

One of my last nights ringing doorbells for candy with friends was spent as a milk carton. It began with a “missing” child’s ad featuring my face through a hole, but when a boy roughly my age from a town or two over made national headlines after he went missing, my way-too-liberal-and-politically-correct-parents decided the “missing” ad should instead be an ad for Oreo. I opted for witty nutritional facts instead.

Senior year, my AP Art History teacher said she would give us extra credit if we entered our high school’s costume contest (small Missouri private school, what can I say?) as an artist or piece of art from our textbook. I was Jesus from “The Last Supper.”

Enter college and Halloween became an unneeded rite-of-passage party till the nights’ end while wearing close to nothing. A circled date on the calendar just puts the questionable outfits into context and girls now have an alibi for the “What are you wearing?!” looks.

What happened to the classroom parties, where the hottest costume was from that year’s biggest movie? Where kids snacked on cupcakes with chocolate spiderweb frosting and fun-size candy galore while bobbing for apples?

I’ve now also learned I grew up with a different Halloween than everyone that isn’t from St. Louis or Des Moines, Iowa.

Apparently, telling jokes in exchange for candy isn’t done anywhere else in the country. Part of the Halloween prep weeks prior was spent reading all the Laffy Taffy wrappers, clipping jokes out of the newspaper and testing them on parents, classmates and teachers.

Crushed doesn’t begin to describe how I felt when I found out that the rest of the country celebrates Halloween in a way that I think is incorrect. I felt as if the next thing I was going to learn was that only the midwest eats turkey on Thanksgiving. The jokes were such a part of my childhood Halloweens that it never crossed my mind that it wouldn’t have been done elsewhere.

I can’t blame my dislike on the absence of jokes.

I guess I don’t understand why Halloween gets the dramatic hype while other holidays that we were once a child’s favorite have been left behind.

College students are the most creative creatures on this planet and can turn everything from a political debate to sports commentators’ redundancy to the latest bad TV show into a drinking game or party theme.

Forget ugly sweater parties, what if the weekend between the end of classes and the beginning of finals was designated “Winter Holiday Weekend” where guys dressed as Santa and “Saturday Night Live”’s Hanukkah Harry and girls were the slutty elves and reindeer?

Maybe if every holiday had the same ridiculous hype, it’d seem more worthwhile.

One thing Halloween is good for is people watching. So, carry on, just don’t ask me what I’m being.

– Sarah Moomaw can be reached at [email protected].