An Ode to Halloween

Halloween is one of my favorite holidays. I should probably care more about Christmas or my birthday, something with special significance, not something as seemingly vapid as Halloween. But Halloween is right up there with the rest of them. No one I know has the patience to hear me rave about it, so - I blog.

I love many aspects of Halloween. The colors of Fall, the fallen leaves, driving over the fallen leaves and listening to them crackle, the colors of Halloween (orange, black, purple - somehow they work wonderfully on Halloween, but any other time, and I'd think they were tacky together.), the scary TV specials, the cute TV specials, the funny TV specials, the dark humor, the sweets, the costumes, the masquerade, the decorations, skeletons, ghosts, monsters, bats, werewolves, zombies, vampires, witches, pumpkins, the grossness, the eccentric fashions, the scariness, and the cute creepiness.

As ridiculous as they can be (and usually are), the Halloween TV specials/movies/whatever seem realest, most likely to happen in real life. It's because they're not pretty. They aren't filled with mermaids, ponies, fairies, sparkles, and bows. Or if they are, they're twisted mermaids, ponies, fairies, sparkles, and bows. They're darker, which is how such escapades probably would be in real life. In real life, such escapades would be ugly and weird and wart-ridden, pertaining more to the occult. And as such, Halloween specials FEEL like the mostly likely to seep into the real world and invade our lives. Okay, I'm exaggerating a tiny bit and of course I don't EXPECT such stuff to happen in real life, but it still feels more real.

In a way, I relate to Halloween. I'm not terribly nice or attractive. I'm eccentric and twisted and weird. Like Halloween. I'm sort of a dark person. Not CRAZY dark, but definitely not light. And something about Halloween speaks to my soul. *Sips coffee elegantly and adjusts beret and ascot and indoor sunglasses* Also, Halloween seems to be the only holiday that (sort of) celebrates cats. We really should have a national Cat Day. Halloween also celebrates saints. Saints are cool.

I should note that I usually don't DO much for Halloween. I don't dress up much, and we get few trick-or-treaters, but I love the FEEL of Halloween.

Also, I admit I don't like Halloween when people take it too far and extol violence as a permissible thrill or make Halloween all about suffering and evil or about pulling pranks and being obscene, etc. Be it Halloween or be it not, I still hate violence and shun the worse scary movies. I've never seen Silence of the Lambs and I plan to shun it till I die.

When people stick with the good sort of scary - the painless, fun, or cute sort of scary - Halloween serves to fill me with a feeling of strangeness, of possibility, and of creativity. AND I don't have to buy anyone presents.

See! Could any other holiday make Creepy this Cute?

Or this?

Or this?

Or THIS?

OR THIS???

No! Because no other holiday is at all about making creepy cute. And Halloween is. At least partly.

Now, I'm considering watching The Mummy. It's not technically a Halloween movie, but it's scary mostly in the good way (mostly, being a key word), and it's pro-cat. Viva la cat!

Happy Halloween!