Katie Pumpkinhead’s Pumpkin Patch

I don't usually care all that much about Christmas. Sure, I remember the feelings it evoked in childhood, but I made peace long ago with the fact that that can never be again. However, somehow, this year has been very hard. I'm not sure what it is. I suppose it's other factors in my life, things that have already been bringing me down, but I have found myself, this year, getting lost in the memories of my childhood Christmases. The excitement of waiting for Santa Claus, seeing certain relatives, anticipating certain gifts, and the reactions I'd get for gifts I chose myself for my loved ones...and it's not as easy to brush off.  I have said a few times this year, that all I want for Christmas is, well, my Christmas to come back. But it can't, for many reasons. The door has shut and locked on that part of my life, and sadly, there is no key. It's all long gone, never to be seen again except in memories.  This is the most depressed I can ever recall being at Ch...

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...

Christmas lingers, like a stain that won't wash out. The party is over, yet all the evidence of it remains.  No one questions whether or not it happened. The signs of it are everywhere. The word is on everyone's tongues, the decorations remain, the music still blares. Three days later and it looks like it's still coming. The world is still so jovial. Christmas is not celebrated for a single day. It goes on, allowing each individual to decide when it is over. As if the universe itself is refusing to let it go. As I stare at the Christmas wonderland still built up around me on December 28th, I think only about Halloween. I think about how quickly Halloween disappears. How quickly it's packed up again come November 1st morning. As if people are embarrassed to admit that they enjoy it, that they even celebrate it in the first place. Christmas is treated like a prestigious trophy, while Halloween is treated like an undergarment left out on a clothesline. Get it away. Get it ...

Something I find interesting, as we head into the "holiday" season, is how society in general tends to view Valentine's Day as some sort of manufactured obligation. All through January and early February, you just hear constantly about how the things meant to be expressed on February 14th, should be expressed freely any other day of the year. And yes, despite the fact that Valentine's Day is and always has been my second favorite holiday, it's a valid point. No calendar date should dictate when we show love and appreciation to anyone in our lives. It should just simply be done.  Something I've come to notice, though, probably heavily due to working in retail as long as I have, is that, despite their insistence on celebrating, people treat the holidays like some sort of awful obligation. This time of year brings out the worst in people rather than the best. And it just leaves me wondering, why do it, then? I do understand the importance of tradition, to an exte...

For all my indifference toward the Christmas season, there is one thing I always have to do every year, to keep a lifelong tradition alive: Watch Disney’s Very Merry Christmas Songs , a sing-along video that I watched for the first time when I was two, and have consistently watched via my original VHS, a DVD version with some more modern bits added, or this YouTube video, at least once a year since. Somehow Christmas songs just sound different coming from this video, and it’s literally the one tradition I still have any control over. This year’s annual viewing took place on the afternoon of December 23rd, and I noticed a suggested video when I was done: An animated special from 1982, The Snowman. I’m not sure how many people will remember The Snowman, as it didn’t seem to catch on in the US quite like it did in the UK, and I don’t have any real memory of it consistently airing beyond the early 90s. I remember seeing it once when I was very little, then again a few years later when I wa...

 I feel like I've been doing a lot of talking about Christmas this year, and I swear it's really not me trying to be "salty" about it, as the kids say. (Do they still say that?) I've just been reflecting a lot this year and find that I have a lot of thoughts and feelings. Just yesterday, I got the bug to wrap the small amount of gifts I currently have on-hand, and for nostalgia's sake, decided to play a few songs from my childhood Christmas gift-wrapping soundtracks, A Rosie Christmas and Another Rosie Christmas.  After about four songs, I was over it. I stuck the gifts under the tree (which for the record was put up by my roommate, before anyone comes at me for lying about my indifference toward Christmas in order to seem spookier) and soon after retired to watch Trick 'r Treat.   There was a part of me, though, that felt sad I couldn't maintain that teeny burst of holiday spirit a little while longer. I started questioning why, and, along with my usu...

 Hang onto your pumpkins, boils and ghouls, because today I'm about to do the unthinkable: Today I'm going to share with you the story of a Christmas memory! If you know me at all, you know that I have extremely vivid memories of just about every Halloween I've ever experienced. I could probably, if I put my mind to it, remember every thought I've ever had about Halloween, in vivid detail. However, even despite the fact that I actually did love it at one point, this is not the case when it comes to Christmas.  I remember the feeling of my childhood Christmases. I remember traditions and that childhood excitement. I remember how the day felt, how the decorations looked, the feeling of believing in Santa and the emptiness of that belief going away. But, for the most part, I really don't remember specifics.  There's nothing about any one particular day or year that stands out to me. Except for one thing. My only vivid, and in my eyes, very amusing, childhood Christ...

 Okay, so, today we’re going to be talking about Christmas.  No, I’m not about to make some grand seasonal switch as to what holiday I’m obsessed with. On the contrary, actually. Due to the constant invalidation of my feelings toward this time of year, and constant passive-aggressive statements eluding to me being some kind of “pick me girl” for staying so faithful to Halloween, I’ve decided I just want to straight-up talk about how Christmas changed for me, in detail, and why it makes me feel, or doesn’t make me feel, the way it does now. It will probably help to get this all off my chest, even if no one reads it. Though I do hope someone out there may find comfort in it in some way. I suppose you could say my descent into Grinchdom began the summer before I started middle school. Prior to this time, I was, more or less, the epitome of the “tiny tot with their eyes all aglow”, who “finds it hard to sleep” on Christmas Eve. No, Christmas was never my favorite holiday, but the ...