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...

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 ...

 I am still going on post-Halloween depression walks on Christmas Eve. I am always looking for the remnants of Halloween. Not just the forgotten decorations, or the pumpkins still fighting for their place in this world, but also the feelings. The dead leaves. The memories. The smell in the air. The ghost that whispers to me, You didn’t dream it.   It’s so easy to get lost in Christmas, whether you enjoy it or not. I think I do it, too, albeit briefly, but it’s impossible not to when it suffocates the world for so long. This afternoon I found myself watching some Christmas-themed films from my youth, trying to feel something. It’s beaten so far into our heads that we’re supposed to feel something this time of year, that we have to. I lose myself to the desperation and depression. I lose myself to the memories of a childhood that will never return, to feelings I can’t and won’t get back. December is like a funeral…for childhood, for autumn, for different variations of myself. It...

 The December pumpkin is tired. The December pumpkin has been living in fear. A nagging fear since the very dawn of November 1st, as the world around them turned into something they didn’t recognize. Beautiful, natural colors replaced with blinding, manufactured lights. Their brethren rotted, or simply discarded, as men made of snow that has not yet fallen take their place. A forgotten world, that just a short time ago, brought joy to so many. The December pumpkin has been told, for so long now, that their time is up. That they shouldn’t exist in this world beyond October. They’re not needed, unimportant. Just succumb to the rot. Fall in line. Surely a pumpkin existing beyond October should have no identity of its own.  There are, of course, many pumpkins who fall victim to this mentality once October has passed. They rot. They crumble. They roll over to make way for Santa Claus and whatever menagerie of colorful creatures he brings with him. For some, there is no turning back...

 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...

 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 ...