Halloween and Happiness: Tricks, Treats, & Emotions

Halloween is fun, but also scary, which is why from a purely happiness standpoint, it is both a good and bad part of the year. Let me explain.

Halloween was originally created to celebrate the dead and frighten evil spirits. This is a noble way to connect to the past and create meaning in someone’s death, although some people still question the value of doing something that doesn’t have visible tangible benefits.

Still, if we focus on the festivities, we are good, right? After all, most modern celebrations are at their core celebrating something that happened before or someone who passed away (remembering the dead, hallows, saints, martyrs, and all the faithful departed). Here I’m thinking of Jesus Christ who died for our sins, and many of his life events and struggles that are currently both celebrated and mourned. So if we start getting too technical, it can get depressing.

In this way, it is better to celebrate the positive side of the past event rather than focus on the negative side and cry about what happened, just like gypsies that turn a funeral into a celebration of the life of a person who passed, instead of their mourning. And it makes sense too, as it is something positive to look forward to, rather than something to want to avoid and do out of a sense of obligation rather than a genuine desire.

After all, who said that death has to be something negative? In a way, we are all going to die and hopefully, we will have a great life, and a great afterlife, in whichever way it may come. So let’s celebrate that, a moment of remembrance of lives lived and of passing to the next level of reality, of being reconnected with the source of all life, God, and its planes of reality.

Still, the part of Halloween that I don’t enjoy is the part where we celebrate the horrors, especially things that are scary, macabre, and supernatural. I don’t like playing pranks, trying to scare each other, and watching scary movies, which just make us negative and paranoid. I explained this very well in my other blog post where I stated why we should stop watching scary movies, as they give us more negativity, which already exists in sufficient amounts in our lives.

I mean, sure, some people see value in negativity, bad emotions, and events that decrease collective well-being (such as wars). However, from a purely happiness perspective and scientific literature, we know that everything works worse when negative emotions are concerned. For example, we are less productive, focused, creative, motivated, feeling good about life, hopeful, healthy, and social when we are negative, and the same is true for virtually all other aspects of life.

While there are some benefits to negative emotions, such as our desire to not be hit by an out-of-control car or lose all our money on a bad investment because of toxic positivity, the comparative value of positive vs negative emotions puts the winning balance on the side of positivity by a huge margin, suggesting that we should try to be as happy as possible as much as possible, and avoid negative emotions and events.

I explain the above point in great detail in Chapter 2 of my book, Optimal Happiness.

In other words, if I had to summarize this article, I would say that we need to avoid negativity and increase positivity. Stop doing things that are negative and make us feel negative, like scaring and pranking each other, watching scary movies, or anything that cultivates negative emotions. Instead, let’s focus on the positivity of the events, such as the celebrations of life, and even death, so we can keep positive emotions flowing.

In the end, it is all about our point of view, the way we choose to look at things, as even in the worst-case scenarios, there is always something positive to find, such as a lesson to be learned. So let’s do that. Let’s embrace positivity as much as possible, as there is already too much negativity in the world.

So if you are interested in learning more about happiness, positivity, and how to cultivate more well-being in your life, you are in the right place. Explore this blog further, as it is full of happiness tips I have accumulated over 8 years of coaching for happiness. And if you want to learn more about how to be happier from a coaching program or one-on-one coaching, we have that too.

Stay happy!