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BOO!

Did I scare you?

No? Let鈥檚 try this: Scientists currently predict global sea levels could rise up to 1.5 meters by 2100, a process that could drown cities and trigger widespread human famine and wildlife extinction.

Scared? You should be鈥攁nd hopefully that little stab of compels you to make some lifestyle changes and influences your votes.

But I don鈥檛 want to talk about doomsday. I鈥檓 here to talk about Halloween. And my real point is that real fear does not feel good. So why are we so prone to giggling at this kind of fright-based Halloween tomfoolery?

The answer, says the research, is that we need holidays like Halloween and because they ritualize our fears, mainly of death. 鈥淗alloween rituals turn horror into play, death into levity, gore into laughter,鈥� says UC Berkeley psychologist Dacher Keltner (who鈥檚 also a co-founder at Greater Good Berkeley, where this article originally appeared).

So Halloween isn鈥檛 just a way to sell candy andHalloween costumes. Here are five scientifically validated reasons for you to treat-or-treat.

1. It鈥檚 a ritual鈥攁nd rituals keep us together

Think, for a moment, about how often you interact with your neighbors. If you鈥檙e the average American, you most of the people on your block.

If you have kids, trick-or-treating is a great way to get to know them. Even if you don’t have kids, putting a goblin out on the lawn and sitting on your stoop with a bucket of candy might enhance your block-level . There are stacks of empirical studies that say this kind of social connection makes you 鈥攁nd that these benefits can spread from person to person. As Steve Almond writes in his marvelous book Candyfreak, 鈥淭here鈥檚 something incredibly liberating about a holiday that encourages children to take candy from strangers.鈥�

The rituals of Halloween also make people pay more attention to candy, and paying attention makes candy taste better, according to . This leads us to our next item鈥�

2. We need candy

My 9-year-old son actually provided this as the main reason why humans need Halloween鈥斺�淚 need candy, Daddy!鈥濃�攁nd my own extremely scientific survey confirms that 10 out of 10 kids like candy.

I assumed that there must be a good evolutionary reason for this鈥攁nd some googling did turn up to support my son鈥檚 claim. For example, an ounce of dark chocolate every day can reduce your risk of cardiovascular disease, and chocolate has been shown to in the brain like endorphins and serotonin.

I could cite more science, but you know what? I鈥檇 eat chocolate even if it depressed the heck out of me, and so would my son. So, on behalf of my family: Thank you, Halloween, for the treats!

3. We actually like safe, moderate levels of stress

Most holidays contain some level of ritual鈥攁nd varying degrees of stress.

Take Thanksgiving, that special time of the year when you get to sit across from your mother-in-law and hear about all the ways you weren鈥檛 fit to marry her precious child. Halloween also entails some stress, and we are often willing pay for stressors like jumping with fright in a haunted house.

Thus Thanksgiving and Halloween trigger similar shots of cortisol鈥攂ut we鈥檙e talking about two very different kinds of stress, and one kind is definitely better than the other. Why would we pay for Halloween thrills and dread Thanksgiving dinner? To explain why some kinds of stress are good for you, here鈥檚 (with a scary beard).

4. We need to pretend

This is another reason cited by my son, who this year is dressed as Finn the Human from the cartoon Adventure Time. If you must know, I will dress as his bro, Jake the Dog.

But he dresses up and pretends all year long, and I go along with him鈥攅ven when his imagination takes us to dark places.

University of Oregon psychologist has found that kids often create pretend characters who do sinister, mean, and even violent things.

鈥淟ike adults who think things through before they act, this gives children an opportunity to play it through before they encounter the situation in real life,鈥� Taylor . 鈥淚f something is bothering you, you can control it or manipulate it in the world of pretending. That鈥檚 a way of developing emotional mastery.鈥�

5. Death can be fun

We can all agree that death sucks. But I think we can also agree that if we’re going to die, we may as well eat a lot of candy before we go.

Halloween is one of many 鈥渕emento mori鈥� traditions designed to make death just a little bit more fun鈥攁nd provide an age-appropriate hint to children about an inescapable fact of life, which is that life ends.

This has emotional benefits. As Oliver Burkemen notes in his essay听one study found that walking through a graveyard made people 40 percent more likely to help a stranger than walking down an ordinary block; another found that can lead us to become more grateful for the things we have in life.

Ultimately, the playfulness of Halloween helps us to prepare for things that are genuinely scary, like climate change. Trick-or-treating is a little light exercise that builds up the emotional strength we need to face our fears.

This article was originally published by听.听