And I Just Can't Wait Until Next Halloween...

Are you all as excited as I am? I don't know if it's because I will be experiencing my first Hallow's Eve as a homeowner or if it's simply because the weather is cooler up here next to Everycity and Ft. Valuecity, but whatever the reason, I'm frothing at the mouth for October 31st this year. I love Halloween. I hope that doesn't make anyone out there in blogland think I'm a pagan. I'm not. I just absolutely love this supernatural nod to the old beliefs in magic and mysterious creatures that has somehow survived the Enlightenment and its systematic demythologization of everything that can't be proved in a laboratory to exist in the modern era.

I love the fact that thousands of people still dress up as ghouls, monsters, zombies, vampires, werewolves, hobbits, and Power Rangers to ward off and confuse the evil spirits that are said to congregate on the last day of October (even if they don't know that this is why costumes were originally worn on Hallow's Eve). I love taking an evening walk around my neighborhood and seeing the orange glimmer of jack o'lanterns on people's front porches, their eerie grins adding just a touch of the unknown to my boring run-of-the-mill life in suburbia.

Who else loves Halloween out there? Is it still cool to like this holiday? I was raised a Methodist during a time when "Fall Festivals" were unheard of as a safe and wholesome alternative to that most evil practice known as "trick-or-treating." Far from discouraging Halloween frivolity, my father would dress up as Jason (complete with an actual meat clever or machete, mind you; none of that plastic Wal-Mart crap at our house) and hide in various closets around the house until he could leap out and add several more months to my tenure in therapy. My mother would wear a witch wig and long fingernails so she could sit on the front porch and cackle at everyone who loitered in our front lawn. These are the people who let me watch An American Werewolf in London when I was three. I come from odd stock...

Anyway, at the risk of sounding too much like a bumper sticker, blog if you love Halloween. And let me know what I should be this year; right now, it's a toss-up between George Harrison and Victor Frankenstein.