Jack-o-lanterns, cotton cobwebs, fake gravestones — or, in other words, Halloween, which was celebrated at Aragon the day before because the holiday fell on a weekend.
Many groups of friend decided to dress up with a theme. “I’m the Skittles Branch of the CIA, the Candy Investigation Agency,”says junior Meiya Lim, who donned a rainbow wig and a pair of sunglasses. “My friend came up with it. We’re all dressed up as different candies.”
Because store bought costumes can be expensive, many people thought of “do it yourself” ways to dress up.“I [was] dressed up as a Jelly Bean,” says sophomore Brooke Hager. “Me and my friend were originally going to be Kit-Kats, but that was kind of hard, so we just decided to dress up as jellybeans. We found the leggings pretty easily. We [used] a sharpie to trace [the Jelly Belly logo] onto a red shirt.” Sophomore Michelle Song also made her costume herself. “I was trying to be a jellyfish,” she says. “I attached LED lights to a clear umbrella and added ribbons to [the umbrella] as tentacles.”
Some people spend weeks thinking of Halloween costume, especially homemade costumes.“It took me a few weeks to make [the costume] because I had to get the materials from Amazon and put it together and everything,” says Song. Others put together their costumes right before school. “I’m a bunny,” says freshman Rachel Heath. “It was the only onesie that fit.”
Even teachers get in the Halloween spirit, and each department decided on a different costume theme. The science department had a “zoo” theme; the math department had a “pi(e)” theme, the world language teachers dressed as characters from the movie “Inside Out,” the English teachers dressed as children’s book characters, and the history teachers dressed up as Supreme Court justices. “[Dressing up as justices] was an idea that [history teacher Heather] Sadlon came up with. She thought it would be a fun way to represent different judges,” says history teacher Jon Felder.
Last year, the Halloween Carnival was one of Leadership’s ways to bring Halloween spirit to Aragon. However, the Halloween Carnival was canceled this year. Leadership student and junior Tiana Pereira who was formerly invovled in planning the Halloween carnival, says, “There were some complications with the date. It was going to be on the Oct. 30 [but]…it conflicted with one of the football games. Health teacher Steve Sell was concerned [because] he was worried about any football players that wanted to go, but couldn’t because of the game, and [Leadership doesn’t] usually like to [schedule] events that conflict with each other.”
Although the Halloween Carnival was canceled, Pereira is excited about planning next year’s. “There should be [a Halloween Carnival next year]. We were really excited, before we had conflicts … about planning this one,” says Pereira. “When we were planning this year’s, we were going over any of the complications from last year’s carnival. We were going to have more food trucks, different locations … small changes like that.”
Even though Halloween was on a Saturday this year, Leadership encouraged students to show up in costume on Friday. Many people seemed to enjoy being able to celebrate Halloween on both Friday and Saturday.“You can feel the Halloween spirit two days in a row instead of just one,” says Song.
