Blogging Halloween 2010

August 26, 2010 — If the weather is cool enough, then Halloween can start for me as early as September 1st. So does Autumn. I also pretty much always use those terms interchangeably. I really should come with an owner’s manual, I guess.

I really dig this time of year. Like more than I can account for. It’s one of two reasons I moved to New England from the Mid-Atlantic, with the other being guaranteed white Christmases (I would also celebrate Christmas for two months if Thanksgiving didn’t get in the way). There’s just something grand about seeing everybody else in the country suddenly and overtly interested in the macabre, giving me a rare feeling of kinship with my fellow man (It’s not you, it’s me).

This is the time of year that companies redesign their product packaging with monsters, blood, and bloody monsters. When grisly-themed candy is set out everywhere, most often at the eye level of children. When the strange business model that is the haunted house proliferates. When the Great Pumpkin rises from his pumpkin patch and flies through the night. When children dress up as spooky creatures that any other time of year would make them run crying. When every television channel plays horror movie marathons. Heck, the only reason I have cable is to watch the holiday commercials and to revel in the seasonal programming. I’d get rid of it the other eight months if it weren’t bundled with my Internet.

And, of course, let's not forget the more G-rated joys of Fall…the caramel apples, the foliage, the corn mazes. All important parts of this season that I wait patiently through three others to get to every year.

I don’t know what I would do if I lived in a world of only Spring and Summer. Wait. Yes I do. I spent three years living in Florida, where I did, in fact, hate life. It does have some awesome amusement parks, though. And manatees.

Anyway, all this word processing to overly introduce the notion that I’ve decided to blog Halloween 2010. I’ve got a few reasons for this. Mainly, I have this new site and it’s more content-flexible than my O.T.I.S. project (although I will be doing relevant Halloween-themed posts there in the coming months, as well). Second, this is the Halloween of The New England Grimpendium for me, so the season should be a special one with more opportunities to celebrate it. It’s also my daughter’s first Halloween, who, at 10 months, won’t care too much about it, but that’s fine. It gives me a few years of Halloween still being mine before I’m replaced by the pod person that is my own offspring.

So as soon as that first sweater day hits, whether it’s September 1st or September 15th, then the decorations go up, the Netflix queue gets re-ordered, the Halloween season starts, and this Halloween 2010 Blog will officially commence. You can also follow me on Twitter (@JWOCKER), of course, for real-time Halloween shenanigans.

Over the next two months, I promise road trips, scary movies, candy binges, Autumn activities, attempts to find new ways to celebrate the season, and plenty of Ray Bradbury references. Like that one.

1 comments:

i completely know how you feel about halloween. its weird that my two favourite holidays, halloween and mardi gras, both invite people to costume. i try not to wonder about that too much. my friend tony, who lives in england, says halloween isn't such a big deal over there, them being all caught up over guy fawkes day. thats a bad trade, if you ask me. anyway, he described halloween to me as "...an excuse for youths to vandalize property, and extort candy." thats a direct quote. i had to mail him a cheap plastic pumpkin, full of halloween candy, with a spooky sounds cd, the first halloween i knew him, to try to get him in the spirit of the holiday.
what i remember best about halloween, when i was a kid, was riding on the let-down tail-gate of my dad's elcamino, back when it was safe (well, maybe not...), to do that, and not completely illegal. i remember running through the wet grass, on cool, clear, halloween nights, from one front door to the next, all high on that little-kid high that was full of adrenaline, with my plastic pumpkin "thwacking" against my leg, candy rattling, panting with excitement, and breathlessness, just to get to the next candy score. then, back at the house, we had to check the candy for needles and razor blades, before i could gorge myself on the bountiful goodness that was my halloween candy stash, until i had a nice belly ache. it was fabulous!
it upsets me that so many people are taking their kids to church or the mall, for halloween (or the re-named "fall festival", for those who want to avoid anything that denotes "devil worship" -what a crock! every day is the devil's day. halloween isn't special to him, just us.). it'll be a sad day, when neighbourhoods no longer decorate their homes, and pass out free candy to the little kids who just want to celebrate an almost magical holiday. cheers!

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