To Keep It Unholy
The first of November can be a particularly sad time for people like us. Halloween is “spooky Christmas,” after all, and for horror nerds and, most especially, those of us for whom Halloween, in particular, holds a special place, the long year that stretches out ahead of us, bereft of the comforts of pumpkins and bats, can seem barren indeed.
That’s why it’s more important now than ever to remember that Halloween is not the culmination of the spooky season – it is the doorway to it. We can talk all we like about Halloween being the one night of the year when the veil between worlds grows thin and “the dead might be looking in to sit by our fires of turf.”
But here’s the thing: Regardless of its actual origins or what the massive comercialization of Christmas might try to tell you, what Halloween really is is the last gasp of life before the world starts to die for the year. This is why, for me, Halloween is about a very specific kind of horror – why certain movies and books just aren’t appropriate for the Season of the Witch, even though they’re spooky favorites. Halloween is about whistling past the graveyard. It’s about scaring ourselves to remind us that we’re alive, at least for now.
From there, though, the days grow shorter, the nights grow tall, and it’s time for all of us to huddle close around the fire. As soon as the last of the pumpkin fires are extinguished, the ghost story season begins. Each day, from here until the solstice, at the very least, is a slow creep toward the grave, and a reminder that we are walking always in the footsteps of the dead, and that soon enough we will join them.
A person like me watches scary movies and reads creepy books all year round. A person like me celebrates Halloween with gusto and, perhaps more to the point, keeps it in my heart (and, in many cases, on my walls and on my person) the whole year long. But it’s also worth remembering that November 1st need not be a sad affair, but rather the beginning of a new season of dark nights and eerie stories that will carry us until the season of grinning pumpkins returns anew.
HALLOWEEN FOREVER!
