The End Of Every Holiday Is An Apocalypse, For Someone//October 142nd, 2024

The end of Valentine’s Day has been weighing heavily on my mind. Being my second-favorite holiday, I suppose that’s to be expected…but the truth is, I feel the weight of the end of every holiday.

It doesn't matter if it's a holiday I celebrate or not. It can be a big holiday, like Christmas, or a small one, like Saint Patrick's Day. It can even be a holiday from a different culture, that I may actually know very little about.

For the few days after every holiday, I feel a strange heaviness.

It's never as all-consuming as it is for me immediately after Halloween. Valentine's Day comes somewhat close but, of course, doesn't quite touch it.

Still, though...

I look at the leftover decorations, the clearance aisles, the social media posts from the previous days, and I feel strangely about it.

I think of how painful it is for me, to watch Halloween get torn down, stored away, reduced to a fifty-percent-off pile of candy corn on a grocery store display.

On February 16th, at work, I watched the Valentine's Day balloons get gathered up and deflated. It felt post-apocalyptic somehow. And while, yes, it did hit harder being basically the only other holiday I look forward to in adulthood (I sort of subconsciously start a Valentine's Day countdown in my head on November 1st morning), I realized more just how much I feel this after every holiday.

Though I may have outgrown most holidays as time has gone on, and largely rejected the calendar-driven life, it does still sadden me to see them pass by. Not so much for myself (though it can be depressing to think about the past, and how once-special days have no devolved into a nothingness), but for the people out there like me, that I know exist.

I've only met one person in my life who matched my Halloween energy with a different holiday. I had a very close friend that I met through LiveJournal many years ago that loved Christmas...hated Halloween, yet we bonded over our intense love for our respective holidays, and were always happy to see each other happy, when the true season started. (I always wished we were closer geographically, as I feel like we would have had an absolute blast on November 1st, me with my clearance Halloween and her with the official start of Christmas.) I have yet to meet anyone else that feels any other holiday so intensely, but I'm certain that they exist. And, at the end of every season, I think of them, wherever they may be.

I think of the way the magic drains out of the leftover remnants of the holiday for everyone else; How Christmas lights suddenly seem dimmer. How Easter eggs suddenly seem colorless. I remember how I felt, in the days after Halloween as a child, when I would look at my decorations before they got taken down, and feel like some kind of light had been snuffed out of them.

And more painful still, is the way the world moves on so easily. Over the past several days, I've watched Easter (and to a slightly lesser extent, Saint Patrick's Day) overtake the former Valentine's Day displays. The bright spot in the dead of winter has become a reminder that spring is on the way, and, I'm sure that someone out there is thrilled to see it, but I'm also sure that someone else is devastated to see the candy hearts and roses and punny teddy bears all gone.

I know that, if someone's favorite holiday, that they feel a connection to in the depths of their very soul, is something other than Halloween, they are most likely not reading this blog, or following me on social media at all. But, just know, if you're out there, I do see you.

I may not care about these "other" holidays, but I know the pain that comes with watching them end. I understand the agony of decorations being ripped down and stored away, and the countdown resetting to 364 (or 365 if it's a leap year...and damned if it doesn't truly feel like one this year), possibly better than anyone. Even when you find ways to live it year round, that emptiness in those first few days is unmatched. And I wonder now, who may be out there, walking around desperately, through clearance aisles and neighborhoods, searching for a sign that their favorite day really and truly did happen.

(This is an older photo of mine, that first inspired this train of thought a couple of years back, on the day after Easter.)

I'm still searching for Halloween, even now.

Stay spooky, my friends. Or jolly. Or lucky. Or hoppy. Or lovey-dovey...Whatever suits you. Calendar be damned.

The Long Way Back//October 32nd, 2023

Every year I talk about November 1st...it's such a confusing day. It makes me feel so many emotions all at once. Mournful, depressed, angry...It's like a slap in the face shoving us into a new month, forcing us to forget what came just hours before. Last year, I did have somewhat of an epiphany regarding the month of November as a whole, and while I do my best to keep my own past words in mind, that doesn't make today any easier. Or easy to explain, for that matter. I suppose I should speak from my heart. Today I feel detached from reality, as if I don't really exist. Like there is no longer a place in the world for me. Just yesterday everything I loved made sense, and was loved and revered by everyone else as well. I felt like I fit. But now, today, I see those same things being quickly shoved away. Less than twenty-four hours after trick-or-treating time began, it's all being swept under the rug. The season culminated and the world is no longer a place I recog

The Spooky Community Has No Entrance Fee//October 288th, 2023

Something I’ve been seeing a lot this year around the Halloween community, possibly more than any other year, has been talk of consumerism, how much money spent on Halloween is too much, whether collecting is really that important or if it’s somehow required to truly be a part of the community, etc. I’m in no way trying to copy anyone else who’s already spoken on this subject, but I thought I would chime in and share my thoughts, as it is something I definitely think about. Now, I’ve always been relatively fortunate when it comes to how much money I have to spend on Halloween goodies. As a child, I often received money for my birthday, September 8th, at the height of the shopping season, at least as I knew it back then. No, it wasn’t enough to collect the way I do now, but it was enough to make me happy, and you also could get a lot more for a lot less back then. I didn’t necessarily stop to think about my “hauls”, but I knew even at a young age that there was nothing I’d rather be sp

Here’s Where The Story Ends//October 337th, 2020

Everyone has moments in their life when they feel like giving up. That feeling of “This is never going to happen, so why keep trying?” Sometimes it relates to a thing that would be trivial to anyone else, sometimes it’s about something more life-altering. But, we’ve all been there. I have moments of discouragement with this blog. Times I’ve told myself, “No one cares”, or “No one will read this”, etc., but I continue on, for the joy of it. And sometimes, something amazing happens. If you haven’t read my previous post, Have You Seen This Pumpkin? , I would strongly suggest doing so before continuing on with this story. The short version is, I saw a pumpkin in someone’s window when I was twelve years old, and have spent the last twenty-one years trying to find it for myself. When I published that post, I wasn’t expecting much of a response. I was really just hoping to hear someone say, “Yes, my family had this pumpkin when I was a kid!” Or “I once saw this in a neighbor’s window while

Katie Pumpkinhead’s Pumpkin Patch

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