Stacey Gross
It’s here. It’s finally here.
There are only a few more days until Halloween.
You guys.
I know a lot of people don’t get it but I am electrified.
I mean, this year I’m basically like a bare bulb accidentally left on in some random empty barn, all dusty and kind of flickering because I was assembled in like 1920, when the wiring was installed. But I’m on.
I am lit up.
Halloween is the most magical time of the year. And I know I’m going to sound like a total Debbie Downer here but stick with me.
Everything is going to sleep. The whole world goes from green to vivid shocks of amber, gold, and scarlet everywhere you look. It’s like the last few minutes of Thanksgiving, before everyone just passes out in food comas and wakes up with Type II Diabetes.
I should add that my soul is basically a big old bear. I’m all about them carbs and hibernations. Love everything about the lifestyle, and I want in. Where do I sign? When do I learn the secret handshake and stuff?
But something in the air at this time of year just gets me in the wasted little pebble of a heart I’ve got left.
I don’t even mind the fact that it’s about to turn into the ice planet of Hoth in a week or so, around here. I’m perfectly fine with winter until about the end of February, when I just transform into Jack Torrance at the end of The Shining. I mean, I don’t drink or hallucinate. But I’m one hundred percent as surly and unpleasant to be around.
But the end of October is just so alive.
I imagine this is what people with a soul feel about Christmas.
It’s everything. It’s the colors, it’s the costumes, it’s the way the air is crispy and clear in the mornings and evenings. THe way the sky at night, as the rain starts to roll in, is the indigo shade of a fading bruise.
And I love, love trick-or-treat. I love the idea of roaming the streets after dark, of wrapping ourselves in the skins of what we’d like to be, in real life. I love the fact that everyone is doing it. Mostly. Except like the cranky old men who turn off their porch lights and hunker down for the night in front of some old westerns or war moves. Muttering under their breaths about how those “darn kids” need to “get off my gosh darn lawn.”
I even love that guy.
I love that that guy has an entire niche of his own to fill, on this one night.
I don’t know. There’s no real big reveal or anything this time.
I could say some junk about how I love that we still take one night out a year to celebrate what scares us. What we’re supposed to find scary. What we hide from, and what we keep hidden.
I could say all the things and make some big profound point, but the fact is that either you are like me, and you would trade every Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, and random excuse for a summer barbecue, for the very best, most perfect Halloween every single year.
Or you aren’t. And you wouldn’t.
For that first group I don’t even need to say it, because they know precisely what I’m talking about.
For the second, it wouldn’t matter anyhow. Because if you don’t absolutely purr at the idea of spending the night on the backstreets of your hometown knocking on your neighbors’ doors and demanding that they either reinforce your behavioral shenanigans with a sacrificial Snickers or inhale sharply the scent of your footwear, no description can make you feel it.
Be spooky. Be sparkly. Be your most fabulous self this Halloween, when you can walk down the street in full Frankenfurter regalia and no one will lift a finger to shame you. It’s the most magical night of the whole entire year.
