For the most part, fall is one of my favorite seasons of the year. But like with anything, I’ve got a list of things I dislike about fall. That list begins and ends with Halloween. Halloween is the absolute worst.

Almost everything surrounding Halloween makes me uncomfortable. Haunted houses, haunted maizes, haunted hay rides. I never enjoyed any of them. I have never been a fan of anything scary. I never understood why people liked going to scary movies or even to amusement parks. To me, that just meant being scared.

But Halloween is something completely different than just scary. There is a large element of Halloween that is just flat out weird. For example, people bob for apples for fun on Halloween. This consists of trying to catch an apple with your mouth while dunking your head in a previously water-filled container with apples throughout. Not fun enough? How about putting your hands in a bowl of spaghetti, because it feels like brains. That’s not normal.

Even when I was a kid, I had no interest in dressing up as someone or something else. Aside from the fact that it was OK to accept candy from strangers, but only for one day, I just never understood why we were idolizing things that oftentimes didn’t even exist. I would see kids dressing up as a fireman, or as a police officer and that made sense, because we saw firemen and police officers all the time. But do you know who didn’t show up to career day? A zombie. You know who else wasn’t there? The skeleton. That’s because zombies and skeletons don’t exist as animated characters in real life, yet for some reason someone thought it would be a good idea for a costume.

Then I got older and realized the narrative around Halloween completely changed. You wanted to be scary when you were a kid, but now you want to be sexy. Want to be a doctor this year? Now you have to be a sexy doctor. Your brother has an old basketball jersey you can wear? Be a sexy basketball player. Maybe I just don’t understand the nature of the holiday, but I can’t seem to wrap my head around when (or why) Halloween changed from scary to sexy.

That brings me to perhaps my biggest issue with Halloween. Aside from Columbus Day, this is perhaps the day we celebrate the most for no good reason. What actually constitutes it being a holiday? The history involves some rituals of warding off ghosts, witches and demons. The wording of the slogan “trick or treat” comes from people actually giving out tricks or treats, which I might be down with the holiday if we brought that back, but I think we’re too far gone from that time.

There is nothing of note indicating why we should be celebrating, or even acknowledging Halloween. Even St. Patrick’s Day has some semblance of a history to it, and I’d like to let it be known that I always toast St. Patrick before indulging in any activities. But Halloween? Who am I supposed to toast during Halloween, the Salem witches?

Unless your idea of getting in the Halloween spirit involves eating copious amounts of candy corn, I recommend you do your best to avoid any Halloween activities. You can thank me later.