Halloween is America’s most patriotic holiday because it is a celebration of life and the founding spirit of ambition. For one night a year, every American has an equal opportunity to pretend that they are whatever they aspire to be,  free of society’s judgment.

Unlike Christmas, Valentine’s Day, and Easter, Halloween doesn’t endorse a specific religion’s history; in the case of former, it also doesn’t violate the constitutional separation of Church and State by being deemed a National Holiday.

Furthermore, Halloween also doesn’t impose a jingoistic and willfully ignorant understanding of history on Americans, unlike Columbus Day and Thanksgiving. Halloween isn’t about celebrating the national identity we’re expected to have, it’s about celebrating the individual identity we want to have.

If eccentric showoffs like Uncle Sam, Davy Crockett, and Paul Revere can achieve Folk Hero status, then there’s room for us ordinary Americans to make spectacles of ourselves once a year. And therein lies the ultimate patriotic truth: Halloween is Americans’ annual opportunity to, in the words of our Army, Be All That We Can Be.