I think the issue is that SE only ever thinks about making everything story-driven because of how it's a "story-driven game". At almost the complete expense of action and actually doing things.

So when there's an event, their main concern is making a sob story where we have to feel sorry for someone and heroicly help give them confidence to achieve something relevant to the event. At the end of that story we're meant to feel all happy and clap and it plays a victory sound of some form.

I'm sure this works for, say, someone who literally only has time for seasonal events due to a busy work life and wants a little positive cute heroic story to get them in the spirit of the season.

But when you do all the rest of the stuff in the game, just being yet another sob story (completely unvoiced) makes it draining to bother.

They could just say "hey! want to participate in the event? go to that haunted manor over there and see if you can get through it without being scared!" and then let us do whatever haunted dungeon they made.