I live in a community that really loves Halloween.

Halloween, of course, is a day: October 31. But here, we celebrate with trick-or-treating over two days, with hours long past my children’s curfew.

We also have a downtown celebration the Friday night before, so this year, that makes it October 29th, 30th, and 31st. And let us not forget the various trunk-or-treats that start a week or so before. Here, Halloween seems to go on forever.

This year, we decorated our car for a trunk-or-treat at our son’s school. We’ve often attended these surprisingly sparse gatherings of dozens of kids. This year, it was packed with hundreds of people. We ran out of candy, so I had to run up to the corner to restock.

Spirit weeks at school, elaborate decorations, and month-long TV spooktaculars get us in the mood long before the day itself. The whole thing is fascinating, if not a bit beguiling.

I’ve always liked Halloween for the fantasy. But even as a kid, I also felt the pressure of getting it right. The right costume, the right spooks, and even the right trick-or-treating route. In a sense, I grew to resent Halloween because it felt less creative and more competitive.

Consumerist competition can make any creative endeavor crass and disappointing. So inevitably, it would bring down Halloween for me. My kids, however, help redeem it.

This all seems an interesting turn for this fascinating day: All Hallows’ Eve. This tradition which began as merely the day before our hallowing of the saints. A tradition of engaging with the frightening devils of the world to see their true powerlessness. That evil will not overcome us.

There is beauty in Halloween’s creativity, its play and dreamscapes, and even in its wickedness.

Halloween offers us, not simply a chance to let loose, but to explore, learn, and remind one another that there is more than evil in the world. And yet, like any great work of true art, we are confronted with the uncomfortable truth: that which scares us the most lurks within us.