Katie Pumpkinhead’s Pumpkin Patch

  I remember the day after Thanksgiving one year, I believe I was twelve or thirteen. I was sitting in my room, and heard noise outside my window. My first thought was that my two neighborhood 'best friends', who had recently decided they enjoyed each other's company far more than mine, were outside playing without me.  I went to my window, wrapping my arms around my corduroy pumpkin and some little turkeys I'd placed around it, and looked out.  I didn't see my supposed friends. In fact, I don't think I saw much of anything at all, as far as the source of the noise was concerned. But, what I did see, was a beautiful, gloomy, autumn afternoon, where a select amount of orange leaves still painted the gray sky.  I'd told myself that year, that perhaps I would feel a little better about Halloween's end if I tried to extend the autumnal feeling by decorating more for Thanksgiving. I'd always hated Thanksgiving, the boring holiday that dared follow Hallowe...

 November 1st used to be my least favorite day of the year. It's painful, still, but in a different way than it used to be. It is both a funeral and a celebration of life. A day of reflection, and some kind of triumph, to see myself and the remaining Halloween decorations still standing. It's difficult, but a strange kind of difficult. I'm coming to realize that the actual hardest day of the year for me, might in fact be the day after Thanksgiving. I believe I have said this over the course of multiple years: Thanksgiving is the final breath of autumn. I held onto it in childhood, despite my dislike of it then, because the pumpkins and scarecrows, and sometimes, still, the ghosts and bats and spiders and whatever else, would often hold on through then. Autumn lingered, though grayer and more bitter, more brittle, but it was still there, through Thanksgiving Day. The world has evolved in the strangest of ways...I have watched Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas compete wi...

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...

 I have long referred to November as my least favorite month. I have said the words "I hate November" more times than I could ever possibly count. The year I was fourteen, I drew dark, defiant Xs through the Os in the month's name on every calendar or day planner that I came into contact with. One year I even referred to it as "NOPEvember" throughout the month. How DARE November exist?! I used to say to myself. How DARE such a miserable month come along and try to follow Halloween and October? Yes, it's devastating when Halloween ends. Yes, I think it adds insult to injury that we're already in an entirely different month the second Halloween passes.  But November is not the enemy. I've realized, in my adult years, as time has gone on, that November is actually an important time. November is an ally. November is the time when fall fights for its life. Though "spooky season" (I'm actually really starting to hate that term.) is deemed ove...

 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 ...

  Thanksgiving is the day that autumn finally throws its now-brittle, bare hands up in defeat. The remaining ghosts of Halloween are pulled back into the Netherworld, as if they are guests who have overstayed their welcome. Thanksgiving is the day the pumpkins get their final chance, if they managed to survive post-Halloween. They sit at their doorsteps, knowing their days are now really numbered, and they will be discarded, or left to rot, unnoticed.  Autumn remains for another month, but it is tired now. Tired of fighting, tired of screaming and barely being heard. Thanksgiving is the day that autumn surrenders. The day that autumn whispers into the wind for one final time,  "I'm still here." Only a few of us hear it. And those few of us know that's it's not  truly  over yet.  But Thanksgiving is a day that feels like a death.  The death of autumn for another year.  There is a finality to it now, and we mourn.

 I have never been a fan of Thanksgiving. As a child, I thought of it as “that boring holiday between Halloween and Christmas”, and found it insulting somehow that such a boring holiday would dare to follow Halloween.  The false history related to the holiday has made me dislike it even more as I’ve gotten older, along with the more trivial, but beyond exhausting, issues that come with being a retail worker this time of year. I can’t find a single thing to like about the holiday itself, and yet I realize there’s a part of me that clings to it. Thanksgiving is autumn’s underwhelming, not-so-grand finale. I think of it a lot like the firework show I went to when I was twelve. Somehow, someone screwed up and the finale came at the beginning. The entire show was backwards. Rapid flashes of color lit up the sky, exciting everyone for what was to come, but instead of the pace picking up even more, things slowed down, until the show came to an end with one meek little white flash. Th...