The Charm of Halloween

Note: The following is actually a blog post I wrote last October, but I missed my window of opportunity to post on October 31. Rather than post on November 1, which would be quite lame, I decided just to table it for a year. As such, some of the information is dated. Think of this as a “previously unreleased” blog post.

I have and will continue to express my affinity for Halloween on this blog. If there’s one thing my blog is good for, it’s being a venue for imparting an appreciation for such abstract spices of life.

First, let me explain the true impetus for this blog post. I was at a get-together at my girlfriend’s mom’s house, and since my girlfriend does face-painting as a part-time gig, we all got our faces painted. I was a Jack-o’-Lantern. Coincidentally, on the way to the party we stopped at Hobby Lobby, which basically tickles my autumn-decoration-funny-bone every time. Sitting in a chair at the party with a cup of chai tea, I reflected on how every Halloween I attempt to tap into a sort of timeless, idealized (yet hopelessly intangible) uber-holiday, a sort of culmination of a collective cultural consciousness. All the things I’ve blogged about before, all the stuff I’ve yet to put into words… every year, the bug bites me again. Every year, I come one step close to the realization that, no matter what, True Halloween seems to be just beyond my grasp. (And, every year, I wax nostalgic and ramble just like I am now, yet every attempt to share the idea is foiled by the inherently insufficient nature of language.)

Later, at my apartment, I carved a pumpkin and watched Trick ‘r Treat, which led to me drafting this blog post in a Word file until such a time as I could access the Internet at work and post it.

Aside: a quick word about Trick 'r Treat: watch this movie right now, if you haven’t seen it already. When I first downloaded the trailer, at work at my boring office job in Kansas City (we’re talking 2006-7, here!), I was immediately sold on it. Ohhhh, yeah. I couldn’t wait. And then, it was delayed. And then, delayed some more. I don’t even remember why. Basically, while the movie was already in the can, it took forever to get released… until finally, years later, it came out on DVD, while I was working as a substitute teacher back home. I watched the movie with the Captain and the Amazing Brando… and immediately declared that it would be a new seasonal tradition. It truly captured the tone I had been looking for. If after the first three minutes of this movie you do not have an irrepressible grin, you have no soul and hate Halloween and are not a real American and I cannot be your friend anymore.

Right. So. Where was I? Yes, yes…

The charm of Halloween.

Back in the 60s, it was considered a holiday just for kids, but not anymore. It’s for high school pranksters, college coed drunken debauchery seekers, suburbanite neighborhood decoration competitors, and for dudes like me: those who reflect a little too much on (as I worded previously) the collective cultural consciousness. Those who try to tap into something timeless from their own childhood.

You must understand a few things about my upbringing. First, I grew up in the country, on a gravel road in rural Missouri, where October is October. Halloween is perfect there: most often chilly and dreary, the leaves crunching beneath your feet. Gnarled, bare, spooky tree branches beckoning, “Room for one more!” And everywhere you turn, cornfields.

We would carve Jack-o’-Lanterns and place them out by the gravel road. Granted, I knew that only a few people would ever see them as they drove down our mostly secluded road, but I got a kick out of imagining the passers-by seeing my handiwork and being impressed—perhaps an early incarnation of the showmanship that would later manifest as a declared music major. The cloudy, post-dusk sky would be an ominous hue, and I could see my breath as I lit the votive in the pumpkins. The silent, flickering orange light would send a giddy shiver down my spine, and only then would I realize that I felt just a liiiiiiittle far from the safety of the house as I noticed just how chill and quiet the landscape was, the hint of fog creeping over the nearby woods as darkness was setting in. I was old enough not to believe in monsters, but young enough to not want to tempt fate.

Rarely, I’d strike the jackpot and the sky would actually take on a brownish hue, which only compounded the experience, because it served as a visual reminder of what was already in my head: the musical score to the cult classic first-person-shooter game Blood, in which you are a Prohibition-era undead minion slaying other undead minions in a cabal. Awesome game. Seriously, check it out on YouTube, because it’s integral to understanding my love of Halloween. Fantastic music, which I’ve been meaning to imitate to this day.

So, imagine yourself as a ten-year-old kid, in the middle of nowhere, Missouri… it’s late October, and the sun is setting beneath a dreary and ominous sky… (this is where I would embed a link to the bridge scene from Evil Dead II, but I can't find it on YouTube. But you know the feeling.)

It’s not too cold to be outside, but just cold enough to see your breath and want to pull your jacket just a little bit tighter. It’s getting dark, and your burgeoning love of film music is showing you just how effective the genre can be, in the form of creeping you out. You are standing before a row of Jack-‘o-Lanterns, admiring your handiwork, while almost transfixed by the stark silence of the flickering orange light they cast. It seems like the candles are too silent… too silent… too… silent… and you wish things weren’t so quiet… and then an owl hoots in the distance, and you shudder, for that was not quite what you had in mind…

While most of you went trick-or-treating in some generic neighborhood, we all piled into the car and went on a journey for our trick-or-treating. Living out in the country, we’d take to the gravel roads, which were spookier than you could imagine on Halloween. We’d drive five, ten, sometimes twenty minutes before finding the house of someone my parents knew. The spooky drive was the best part. Then, we’d get to some secluded house, and ring the doorbell of an actual farmhouse, and they would have their folksy Halloween decorations up (the envy of Country Living Magazine or whatever), and we’d get candy and socialize for a little while. Unless I’m remembering incorrectly, that’s how it would go: the kids (us) would be there to show off our costumes and experience the full-on country Halloween spookiness (and, of course, get candy), while the adults would be there for good ol’ conversation, catching up. Everybody wins.

When I was older, I discovered corn mazes. I love corn mazes. They tap into that vague sense of… unease. You get lost. Stuck. The afternoon wears on, and you know night is coming, and with the night… comes… darkness.

Sadly, I am fiercely allergic to both hay and straw, so I inevitably miss out on some of the best aspects of the season. I remember going on a hayride when I was in middle school, and it was a drag. Awesome fun, but sneezy. And the elaborate hay tunnel maze put on by the Ag shop’s Barnwarming festival? Yeah, it’s a wonder I didn’t develop claustrophobia after that. Hard to breathe, lost, stuck in the middle of a multi-tier crawl-tunnel… should have been the most awesome thing ever, but it sucked hard. Most inconvenient allergy ever.

In Bowling Green, a bunch of friends went to a corn maze, and I had a true blast, but I sat out for the hayride afterwards and just had some hot apple cider, enjoying the brisk air and waning afternoon light. And then, afterwards, I told them I had to go back to my office to work on my thesis instead of watch movies. Yeah, they were incredulous at my untimely work ethic, but… that’s another blog post entirely.

Corn mazes, hayrides, apple cider, candy apples. Carving pumpkins. Candles. Pipe organs. The soundtrack to Blood. Chill Missouri October evening air. Horror movies (from bad to worse to worst). Scarecrows. Brach’s Maple Nut Goodies.

In my parents’ basement, there was a trunk full of old costume components. And I mean a trunk. As in, treasure. A bona fide treasure chest. Two of them, actually. Three feet wide. We’d dig up old masks and robes…

Alvin Schwartz published three books that became canon for me as a kid: Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark. The artwork made it for me. Seriously! The artwork, dude… it’s perfect. Anyway, those three books were much, much later re-released as one hardbound volume, which (go figure) was discontinued this year, when I was finally ready to buy it. I’d sip hot apple cider in the café of Borders in Lee’s Summit while reading those stories for old times’ sake… but I took it for granted that the books would always be in the stores for me. Now, I guess I’ll have to order it off Amazon. I should have known, when last year I saw Barnes & Noble had it on the clearance rack.

Another self-made tradition… good stuff.

After grad school, when I was working in Kansas City, I spent Halloween evening after work joyriding through the gingerbread houses of the Armour Hills neighborhood, listening to Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban while observing the many trick-or-treaters on a fervent, wholesome quest for candy… and, undoubtedly, to show off their costumes to cajoling adults behind every door.

I realize how disjoint and scatterbrained this blog post is becoming, but you must understand that I am trying to get these points across to you in a desperate effort to share the appeal of Halloween, and I am also drinking Hiram Walker Original Coffee Flavored Brandy, which is pretty much the best thing you’ll ever put in your mouth. Ahem.

Also in Kansas City, post-BG, I created another tradition for myself. I never quite got into D&D so far as to actually play it, but I have two sourcebook that I read every year: Heroes of Horror and Libris Mortis: The Book of Undead. From 3.5 Edition of the game. Hey, for me it’s more entertaining to read about the game than to actually play it. If you get the chance, you should flip through those books. They really capture the atmosphere.

I’m assuming you also grew up watching It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown! and Garfield’s Halloween Adventure every year. If not, then… you missed out.

For my money, nothing beats the opening shot of The Evil Dead. That sound effect with that angle… yes. YES. Oh, memories…

For the love of Halloween, please go out and buy the score to Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. You’ll be doing yourself a favor! I am transported back to the brick road of Main Street of historic downtown St. Charles, Missouri, seeking a good cup of coffee and countless, rustic shops full of trinkets… or perhaps Bowling Green, Ohio, coincidentally also in search of a good cup of coffee, meeting some friends for some well-earned down time. And festivities pervade the air…

And transported farther back, much farther back… to a dreary, ominous, chilly October evening… my breath visible in the deathly silent air… soulless trees curling their bare branches in a gnarled, come-hither arc… slightly soggy patches of yellowing grass acting as counterpoint to the otherwise crunchy leaves beneath my feet… the warm, flickering orange light of the pumpkin’s carved face slowly taking on a personality of its own…

Halloween…

Hopefully, I’ve succeeded in painting a portrait of Halloween for you. Hopefully, I’ve managed to convey the appeal, the formative aspects that have contributed to my annual enjoyment. If you’ve actually read this far, you probably share the affinity for the festive holiday that is Halloween, in which case I’ll accept a fist bump from you now.

My only wish is that this blog post either made you connect—either with Halloween’s charm or with my own background. An understanding, if you will: a better goal, there is none.

Alas, I will be working through Halloween, and then Christmas will be just around the corner, so I will have to come back to this next year. Next year, my friends, I will try to give you even more Halloween flavor to enhance your seasonal life.

Now that I think of it, Halloween was always sort of the first of a trilogy for me: Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas. Especially in grade school, where you’d have one primary theme per month for three months, and Lord knows those rural Missouri grade school teachers loved to decorate the classrooms for each. So, part of the appeal of Halloween was that it was just the start of something wonderful (though, admittedly, entirely antithetical to the Christmas theme). There was always more to look forward to.

It’s good to be a kid on Halloween.

Stay spooky. See you next year…


See also:
Octoberness
Danse Macabre
That Nip in the Air
The Necropolis Trilogy, Part I: Secrets
The Necropolis Trilogy, Part III: Scourge
Cinnamon Pumpkin Zombie Spice

This blog post has been brought to you by Hiram Walker Original Coffee Flavored Brandy. Please drink responsibly.