For as long as I can remember, I’ve referred to Thanksgiving as my least favorite holiday. (Though honestly, in adulthood, I think that’s actually New Year’s; When you’re not a partier and consider the calendar your mortal enemy, what’s the point?) As a child I found it boring, especially in comparison to both Halloween and Christmas, the holidays it was jammed in between, and as an adult I find it exhausting and pointless. I don’t really even like the food all that much.
But, I can’t help but acknowledge the fact that I also cling to it a little, as autumn’s final breath.
Christmas didn’t take over as quickly when I was younger as it does now. Halloween ended, and autumn slowly, more gradually, faded away into a more dismal version of itself, with grayer skies, browner leaves, and less magic. Ghosts, black cats, witches, spiders, and skeletons disappeared from lawn displays, while pumpkins and scarecrows remained. On some level they seemed almost tired…I think I thought of them as being as bored as I was with Thanksgiving as a child, as displaced. We’re being told it’s still fall, we’re being told there’s still more to celebrate, that we’re still needed…but it feels like the magic is fading, barely visible.
Thanksgiving, I think, has always both fueled my post-Halloween depression and also provided hope for it. As I clung to the decorations I was allowed to leave up, desperately trying to cheer myself by adding happy, autumnal turkeys, but still missing what my pumpkins and scarecrows once were; what they once represented.
Nowadays, Christmas comes in like a wrecking ball. On November 1st morning, even earlier in some cases, it explodes onto the scene and basically obliterates Halloween and all memory of it, along with the remaining almost-two-months of autumn. It's a total flip of the switch, from one extreme to another. But Thanksgiving, back when it was given its time, was a slow descent. Thanksgiving promised us that autumn would still hang around for a little while longer. It was the promise that pumpkins would still be on doorsteps, and friendly scarecrows would be waving as we passed. While Halloween's end still felt abrupt, Thanksgiving, on some level, made it feel a little less final, and I don't think I ever appreciated that enough.
Also, a fun fact you may not know...Thanksgiving was actually sort of the first version of Halloween in the US!
My grandfather told me many years ago, when I was probably seven or eight, that he used to go trick-or-treating, or as it was called back then, "begging", on Thanksgiving Day! (Side note: He referred to "trick-or-treating" as "begging" until he passed away.) He claimed he would dress up and go door to door asking "Got anything for Thanksgiving?" I honestly thought he was joking at first, and believed for several years that he'd just said that to make me laugh, until I finally looked it up.
Thanksgiving begging was most definitely a thing! It seems like it was primarily a New York thing, which makes sense as my grandfather grew up there after immigrating from Scotland, but this tradition, also called "Ragamuffin Day", seems to be almost a precursor to Halloween and trick-or-treating that died off before the 1940s. Perhaps I should be a little more thankful for Thanksgiving, after all! I did wish, after my grandfather initially told me this as a child, that it were a still a thing; a way to have two Halloweens in the span of a short time, a final flicker before the flame, as it was sung about in my childhood song, goes out.
Thanksgiving will probably never be a day that I actively look forward to, but I think I will always feel sad when it ends. It sucks the final breaths out of autumn as it goes, and takes with it the last remaining ghosts of Halloween. The finality of things once Thanksgiving has passed, the last holiday that feels autumnal in any way, is strangely intense.
I went outside to take a picture last night, and I could feel it. The final goodbye of autumn, surrendering to the fact that no one seems to care about it anymore once Halloween has passed. As the sky darkened, I could smell autumn in the air once more, feel a warmth around me of its existence being acknowledged one final time, but I could also feel the defeat of my favorite season, turning and walking away with a final, dying breath.
But remember, dear boils and ghouls, as the summer people love to reiterate with us when September hits, autumn isn't actually over yet, for just about another month. And Halloween never has to be over, if you truly believe in it.
I live in a world of perpetual October, never truly letting it walk away. But the rest of the world sees things in black and white and calendar pages, and sometimes it's hard not to mourn that loss, as the pages turn, as the pumpkins rot, as all signs of autumn begin to fade.
Stay spooky, my friends.
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