Adult Halloween is very lame. Ninety percent of people wear some stupid plastic Spirit Halloween Store hot nurse thing, go to a party with other celebrants of adult Halloween, and get drunk on Jell-O shots. There is grimly determined mayhem there, but no real anarchy. It is an attempt to recreate what cannot be recreated: the slinky darkness descending on the town upon which you, a child, were about to be unleashed; the cold breath of frost on Mischief Night.

Some would have us abandon adult Halloween together. The line between childhood and adulthood is the one between wildness and order, pleasure and responsibility. Halloween is a festival for children, in this line of criticism, and childless millennials would do better to get a clue, settle down, and work toward becoming stewards of childhood delight rather than trying to rummage up their own.

But Halloween is for everyone.