A Good Old Fashioned Hallows Eve

Big and small, I love you. From the sparkly glamour of New Year’s Eve, to the sound of hooves on the rooftops at Christmas, each holiday, widely observed or not, is an opportunity to decorate, dress up, watch themed movies, sing holiday songs and eat special foods. And kicking off the fall season, when the leaves are on the ground and snuggling up on the couch with a good book and a big hot cup of cider is a true reward at the end of the day, is Halloween. I am a holiday purist, even more so after working many years in corporate retail where we skipped over Thanksgiving and put out Christmas décor in September. What I want to see in my house on Thanksgiving is a big pumpkin candle, not a jolly snowman. I usually decorate for Halloween a few weeks before the day arrives, then I go straight into Thanksgiving/Fall décor. And when Thanksgiving weekend is good and over, I start decking the halls. And not a minute before. So here we are, a few days before Halloween and my store window is jauntily decorated with leaves and Halloween lights, and tombstones and bats and spider webs. (This is, for me, a tad ironic, since the bats that have nested in the doorway of the store a few times this year FREAK ME OUT!) The more realistic the decorations, the better in my book. I have no real desire for cartoony leaves or fake-looking ghosts or other modern decorations. If something is fake, I better think that the hand grasping at me is really real or that those spider webs just might stick to my clothing. In fact, a leaf from my fall display got loose today and staring at it on the floor; I thought it was a real one that blew in. That is a vote of confidence, I would say. As of yet, I have not gotten to the outdoor portion of decorating for holidays. I own those decorations, but quite honestly living in a self-created construction zone, my biggest priority is tiling the shower, not hanging glow-in-the-dark ghostly sheets from my apple trees. I live in hope that the majority of my projects will hit the completion level by Christmas and then I can start work on the outdoor manger . . . . One can hope. But, thankfully, my longing for a decorated lawn is curbed by the lovely drive I take down 2nd Ave West on my way to work each morning. No crazy sparkly ghosts or cartoon characters, but huge bundles of cornstalks and pumpkins. Ghosts made from white sheeting dance in a circle around a tree and leaves do their own decorating as they blow around the streets. Every time I drive down that road, I see something new, a jack-o-lantern tucked in a doorway, a sneaky spider dangling from a window, and it just makes me smile. In the age where everything has to be new, loud and mechanical, I love it when people just go back to the basics. Sometimes the needle mess from a real tree is worth it, the nostalgic sparklers brighter than the POW of flashy fireworks, and the rotting mess that carving a real pumpkin so often leaves behind is forgotten by the time you carve it again the following year.