Once, in my twenties, I left my artificial Christmas tree up the entire year and made/mostly scrounged decorations for the holidays as they came up, skipping true duds like President’s Day but hittin’ the highlights: Valentine’s Day, Easter, Halloween.

It was a terrible idea, poorly executed. I traveled a lot for my crap job so I didn’t have the time and energy to make really cute things. And I was making crap money so I couldn’t just buy my way into cuteness. Plastic Easter eggs were cheap and very similar to Christmas ornaments, so that was fine, but things like Valentine cards and shamrocks looked quite pathetic slapped up on a tree.

I remembered this terrible tidbit from my past as I was getting myself worked up over those spooooooky black (or purple, or orange … or teal*) Halloween trees that have been around for a while but seem to be everywhere now. (Online. I only know about the world online. I rarely go outside. Shhh.) Most of them are classic Christmas pine tree shapes, just in Halloween colors, from tinsel trees to big ol’ pre-lit trees to ceramic trees.

I don’t like ‘em.

No hate if you do like these Hallowtrees, but I just feel like if there has to be a Halloween tree, it should look Halloween-y in more than just color alone, like it could be a leafless dead tree with a face or something that you slap candy all over and it shrieks if you try to take the candy off. I’d be down with that.

Truly, the holiday industrial complex is just taking forms they can already make and changing the colors a little to try to sell you the same thing for a different time. So you get these candy corn-colored trees as big as a human teenager and that ain’t right. Don’t celebrate candy corn in that way. If you must celebrate candy corn (please don’t, it’s gross) find another way. Halloween already has so many fun things associated with it. It does not need Christmas-style trees.

Oh, no. I just remembered that I didn’t skip President’s Day, I put a couple dollar bills on the tree. And pennies.

And yes, it was discovering the candy corn trees that sent me truly over the edge into anti-Halloween tree territory. I saw a set of candy corn ceramic trees and it broke me. They probably do taste better than actual candy corn, tho.

*Teal is a Halloween color now because teal pumpkin buckets and bowls are for trick-or-treaters/treats that are not food, for people with food allergies.