The day after Halloween has always been the most difficult day of the year for me.
Over time, it’s gotten harder, as the rush to begin the Christmas season begins earlier and earlier with each passing year. The fact that autumn still has almost two months left in it, is entirely forgotten.
But, even as a wide-eyed child who did enjoy and look forward to Christmas each year, November, and specifically the first, was still a desolate time.
Obviously, in my adult years, I’ve built my life around making every day feel like Halloween in some capacity. It truly helps, but it doesn’t change the metamorphosis that the world seems to undergo the second the clock strikes midnight on November first.
(Art by Ally Burke, @funnyskullgrin on Instagram)
There is a feeling that something has been extinguished. The aura of magic that seemed to surround everything just a few short hours before has evaporated somehow. That feeling of “anything can happen”, that spooky excitement that only ever seems to truly exist during the month of October, has left. The world feels back to “business as usual”, as we watch the Halloween merchandise drain from stores and the decorations come down from most properties. Even the decorations that survive what seems to be mass rip-down that happens the second the last trick-or-treater has returned home for the evening (Is that a thing that happens everywhere? Because it seems like some sort of weird tradition in the area I grew up in.) have lost their blush in some way. There’s a finality to November first that I don’t feel with any other holiday. Perhaps it’s because we’re already onto a new month. There’s not even a second to step back and “mourn” the festivities that have passed. November means Thanksgiving and Thanksgiving means just about Christmas...People move on like Halloween never happened.
There was a book I had as a child. I can’t remember the name of it or even much about the plot; it actually may have been a version of To Grandmother’s House We Go, but it was set on Thanksgiving. My mother would dig it out, usually right around the time Halloween ended , and read it to me before bed some nights, and what I remember the most about it, from one of the first times I ever looked inside the book myself, was how dreary the pictures seemed despite being set in autumn. I instantly knew that this story was not taking place during my autumn, the vibrant, anticipation-filled days of colorful skies and spookiness leading up to Halloween, but during that other bit of autumn. That gray, boring, almost colorless period when the leaves turned brown and the magic went away. In hindsight, the feeling that book gave me, may have been my first real bout of post-Halloween depression.
As I’ve gotten older, it manifests more as a sapping of energy, and a feeling of no longer belonging in the world. It’s as if I spend eleven or so months of the year away at boarding school, and then finally get to come home in October, when the world looks like something that I recognize; a place I want to be. And it always ends too soon. Then it’s back to a life of pretending to fit in, finding scraps of what makes me happy where I can, and trying to make my own, but never am I so content as I am during that one beautiful month.
For everyone out there who may be feeling the heaviness of today, I see you. To the kids (and adults!) still rocking their costumes today because they’re just not ready to let Halloween go yet, I thank you. You don’t realize how many people’ days you may have made just by keeping the Halloween flame alive. To those digging through clearance products, I am with you in spirit and I hope you find that item you passed up so many times all season long. And for those that need to cry, I hear you.
It’s a difficult thing, to love something so much and watch it die over and over again each year. Maybe now more than ever.
Don’t let the flame burn out. October can last forever if you want it to, but that doesn’t mean we can’t mourn the “real” October as it passes.
Stay spooky, my friends.
Ok we cried twice while reading this! I feel all this as well! But this year I am going to try really hard to keep that Halloween spirit alive. There are so many things to be sad for this year and Halloween makes me so happy I can't let that feeling go!
ReplyDeleteI am so glad this post seems to be resonating with people! I was just feeling so much yesterday that I had to write something about it. I hope we can keep October and Halloween alive all year long!
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