Halloween

I love Halloween. My wife loves it even more; it’s her favorite holiday (although calling it a holiday when you don’t even get the day off is a bit of a stretch; why don’t we get a day off? better yet, we should get two days off – Halloween and the day after to recover from all the partying (for the older crowd) and the OC (that’s overeating candy) (for everyone) (and yes I know my syntax is all messed up with parentheses everywhere and messed up punctuation, but nobody’s grading me and if you don’t like it you can just stop reading); it’s this lack of recognition by schools and businesses of the greatness of Halloween that keeps it from being in my top 3 holidays because otherwise it’d be right up there with Christmas; not that the schools and businesses control my feelings but…dammit they’ve won this round). Why is Halloween so great? Because it’s about scaring people. Who doesn’t love being scared every once in a while? Please throw away and stop making all those cute decorations with the smiling pumpkins and ghosts. Give me a scythe-wielding Death or a screaming skull any day. Erect a few tombstones in the yard and scatter some bones. Dangle a spider (a fake one if you’re a pansy) above the front door. Go to a haunted house. Find out if any ghosts live within driving distance and seek them out, preferably after midnight. Read ghost stories, or something else downright creepy. Don’t dress your kids up as a kitty cat and puppy dog, but instead make them walking skeletons (as our 18 month old boys will be), headless horsemen, ghouls, goblins, witches, whatever but make it scary. After all, it’s the festival of Samhain, the Celtic Lord of the Dead, and the souls of the dead are amongst us.

But I also like that Halloween seems to officially bring in the fall (with apologies to those living in the north, where fall is brought in sometime around late July). Days get shorter, darker, and colder, and I revel in the change. Daylight Savings Time ends just before Halloween (we’ll ignore that stupid Energy Policy Act for now), ensuring for the ghosts, ghouls, and goblins darkness for their mischief.

And after Halloween it’s just a few short weeks before we hit the holiday season recognized by our cursed educational and vocational systems, which is a season I love even more than Halloween (sorry Charlise).