Katie Pumpkinhead’s Pumpkin Patch

As you can probably imagine, being a retail worker this time of year means I'm forced to listen to quite a bit of Christmas music against my will.  And my store is relentless with it. I've been to other stores where they at least get a mixture, a few traditional grocery store pop songs, then a few Christmas songs, and so on, but my job goes hard on nothing but Christmas from the time I clock in until the time I clock out. And a lot of the songs are the same, just with a different singer or maybe a slightly different style.  One song I hear pretty consecutively every year, is We Need A Little Christmas.  Aside from the fact that this song always makes me think of a special I had recorded from when the live action 101 Dalmatians film was coming out, I have, for many years, felt as if a Halloween version of this song would be my ultimate theme song. After all, it's all about feeling blue and needing the comfort of your favorite time of year, and the excitement that it brings...

  Maybe it's time for me to just come right out and say, "I hate Christmas." Do I hate Christmas, though? I don't really know. I know it hasn't been the same for me in many years now, and I know the glow of mechanical lights and the imagery of a mystical being who doesn't actually exist, don't make things go away, or get better.  This time of year makes people so angry and hostile, even those who claim to love it.  I'd rather just skip it. I think of how much happier people seem to be during Halloween, when nothing is forced. People celebrate because they want to; perhaps having the desire to be someone else, or escape their own reality for a little while. Pretend not to be so afraid. Whatever it is. It's total freedom.  I look around as Christmas gets closer and feel like everyone has forgotten. As if they'd rather be obligated than free. I look at the houses that used to seem so alive, ironic in the season of death, and see pumpkins lined up ...

  I've not cared much for December for many years now.  Adulthood came, and confiscated the magic of Christmas.  I guess I never really minded, as I've always felt I have something much more magical.  But still, I look around at the colorful lights and smiling characters adorning the lawns now, where the skeletons and pumpkins and ghosts stood not long ago at all, and I feel resentment. Society forgets that November is still, very much, autumn. The world forgets to hold space for the remaining pumpkins and scarecrows, anymore.  But I watch for them. I've learned to treat November like an extension of October. A funeral, of sorts. I celebrate the fact that it happened, and search for the remnants around me. This year, though, it hasn't been easy.  October, for the most part, felt like an extension of summer. Halloween came with a high of 83 degrees and blazing sun, as if October itself wanted to wear a costume that made it almost unrecognizable. It felt more...

  I remember the day after Thanksgiving one year, I believe I was twelve or thirteen. I was sitting in my room, and heard noise outside my window. My first thought was that my two neighborhood 'best friends', who had recently decided they enjoyed each other's company far more than mine, were outside playing without me.  I went to my window, wrapping my arms around my corduroy pumpkin and some little turkeys I'd placed around it, and looked out.  I didn't see my supposed friends. In fact, I don't think I saw much of anything at all, as far as the source of the noise was concerned. But, what I did see, was a beautiful, gloomy, autumn afternoon, where a select amount of orange leaves still painted the gray sky.  I'd told myself that year, that perhaps I would feel a little better about Halloween's end if I tried to extend the autumnal feeling by decorating more for Thanksgiving. I'd always hated Thanksgiving, the boring holiday that dared follow Hallowe...

People have always asked me what it is that I love so much about Halloween. Why it's so important to me. How it all came to be. And this has always been the hardest question for me to answer.  I've never really known.  I just remember Halloween coming into my life one day ( October 31st, 1991 , to be exact) when I was four years old, and I was never the same again. I was me from that day forward.  But the more I think about Halloween in adulthood, the more I see what an escape it is, for everyone. I think there's a reason why it comes earlier each year now, and why it has such a loyal following, whether you're in it year round or just wait for it to come back every year.  I think the world needs Halloween.  People need to be able to take comfort in the things that maybe would normally not be "socially acceptable". Be who we actually want to be, even if it's just for a short while. I've always thought you could tell a lot about a person based on the cos...

 The way I feel about Halloween's end is strange this year.  It's taken me almost this entire week to really process that it's "over"... I'm not sure if the weather had something to do with that, as it was 83 degrees on Halloween day. I think, perhaps, that made it feel more like the period in summer when it feels like Halloween season because there are things in the stores, but you know it's not actually October yet.  So much of October was sunny and dry....I don't think we had a single gloomy day. Temperature wise, I think I can count on one hand the number of days where it actually felt like autumn. I had a good time, tried to soak in that October feeling as much as I could (and ultimately I think I was more present in it this year than I have been in awhile), but it was quite depressing to feel so summery during the time of year I wait for, that's already so very fleeting as it is. It felt a bit like having an uninvited guest, someone determine...