I Choose Darkness - Jenny Lawson - ★★★.½

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AUTHOR: Jenny Lawson
GENRE: Humour Essay
RATING: 3.5 stars.

In a Nutshell: An essay by journalist-blogger Jenny Lawson about her favourite festival. Hint - It’s not Christmas. Humorous but not memorable.


Jenny Lawson is known for her humour blog, where she writes her thoughts on many topics in a tongue-in-cheek manner. This essay is on the same lines.

Lawson begins by declaring her dislike for Christmas, Hanukkah and Thanksgiving, not because of religious reasons but because of the huge amount of planning and preparations these festivals entail. Her favourite holiday is Halloween, which she lovingly calls “the glorious dark queen of the year”. This brief 25 page essay documents, in a fun way, Lawson’s passion for Halloween, and how she celebrates it while still being incredibly lazy about the “celebration”.

There wasn’t much personal connect for me with the core topic as I don’t celebrate Halloween. (Nothing against it personally; it’s just not celebrated in India.) But I do know enough about Halloween through books and movies, so Lawson’s humour made the topic entertaining. Her comments about her decorative and culinary skills are amusing. Her hilarious reminiscences about the family Halloween celebrations during her childhood in rural Texas are the best parts of this essay. It was nice to see a few photos confirming what the author wrote about the old costumes.

I also loved the interludes where Lawson’s editor makes an on-page appearance, and the essay turns into script format, with the editor and the author having a discussion about getting the story back on track. These conversations were hilarious!

All in all, this is a very quick read. If you go through this with an overly logical lens, you might find flaws, as often happen with humour essays. So just read it in the right spirit, as a fun memoir-like essay about why the author loves the darkness of Halloween. It is a good introduction to the wit of the author but too short to be memorable. Maybe it will establish a greater nostalgic connect with readers who celebrated Halloween before the advent of the internet.

The digital version of this essay is currently available free to Amazon Prime subscribers.

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