Halloween is undoubtedly the best holiday in existence. If you disagree, perhaps you’ve forgotten the spooky magic it brought you as a child. Let me take you back.

There’s a slight chill in the late October air. Your mother yelled at you to put on a jacket as you ran off with your siblings and neighborhood friends, but you pretended not to hear her. There was no way a stupid coat was going to get in the way of all the neighbors seeing your awesome Halloween costume. This year you’re a hippie—rainbow tie dye and peace signs galore!

You and your friends sprint down the streets, chasing each other up driveways to get the coveted first choice of candy. Still catching your breath, you exclaim, “trick or treat!” as your neighbors open their doors. It’s supposed to be a question, but you don’t have time for that. You’ve got the entire neighborhood to scour for candy, a huge sweet tooth and a strict 10 p.m. curfew.

It’s every super hero and princess for themselves. You can’t lag too long at any house, stuck in a conversation with well-meaning Mrs. Smith or Mr. Brown, or you’ll be left behind. Spiderman and Cinderella wait for no one.

Around 9 p.m., houses start closing up and younger kids start heading home. As dusk falls, your gang searches for the houses of naïve neighbors who put out “only take one” bowls for the remaining trick-or-treaters. With only a slight twinge of guilt, you and your friends divide the entire bowl between yourselves before running off again into the night.

By 10 p.m., you’ve inevitably lost a costume accessory or suffered a breach in your candy-holding pillowcase. But you persisted through this adversity, and you’d like to think you came out stronger on the other side. You and your friends try to hide from your parents for a little bit, but eventually you heed their orders to come on home.

But the night isn’t over yet. You and your friends sit in a circle to begin the rounds of negotiation. Two Twizzlers for a Milky Way. Four Tootsie rolls for a Hershey’s bar.  You are insulted by your brother’s attempt to trade a Three Musketeers for your Reese’s, a clear sign of disrespect for the best candy of all time.

After some intense bargaining, you guard your pillowcase overflowing with sweet sugary treats like it’s your baby. You are horrified when your parents demand a “candy tax.” You give them the undesirables, the candies no one even bothered trying to trade (Whoppers and Almond Joys, I’m talking about you), as well as the plastic toothbrush the neighborhood dentist gave you instead of the cavity-creating chocolates you really wanted.

You go to bed with a full stomach and the beginnings of a headache—despite your parents’ warnings, you’ve surpassed your sugar limit. As you dream of black cats and green-faced witches, you decide it was totally worth it.

The rush that Halloween brings to kids all over the country is unmatched. When I think of Halloween, I think of the freedom of sprinting through the night, laughing until my lungs hurt, the thrill of being scared by fantastical monsters and ghosts and of course, the heavenly taste of Reese’s.

Sure, Thanksgiving family gatherings, Christmas spirit and Fourth of July fireworks are great, but no holiday can ever beat the exhilaration of Halloween.

Even though I’m now way too old to trick-or-treat, the same spirit of those exciting childhood Halloween nights permeates the October air. Haunted houses and spooky stories, pumpkin carving and apple-cider drinking and of course, dressing up in a top-notch costume remind me of my days running through my neighborhood as the latest Disney princess.

I think we could all use a taste of that childhood exhilaration every once in a while.