All This for a Three Hour Holiday?

Aging grouch alert: You’ve been warned. Now…what’s with the trend to decorate the front of your house for Halloween with orange lights, huge pumpkins, enormous spider webs,  and ghosts? Can’t these people wait a few short weeks until they can follow the long standing, sensible tradition of decorating the house and yard with red, white and green lights? Not to mention the Macy’s parade-size inflatable Santa and faux snow. Isn’t it tiresome enough to wrap and then unwrap lights around trees, bushes and railings on a day that’s guaranteed to have freezing rain in the forecast?

Who in their right mind willingly shells out hard earned dollars to celebrate a so-called holiday that lasts about three hours?  Last time I checked, Christmas was a whole season. That must be why we cheerfully say, “Seasons Greetings” isn’t it? It’s not as long as a football season, but it is long enough to justify the trouble and expense of lighting up your front porch, lawn and roof.

Listen: Christmas is all about joy to the world, peace on earth, good will toward men. There’s stockings filled with Prell and Gillette Fusion ProGlide Razors, delicious stuffed turkey and pumpkin pie. Halloween is about silly costumes. It’s about candy which leads to cavities and unpleasant visits to the dentist. As my friend Jill put it, “Deck the haunted halls doesn’t have a ring to it.” 

I’m very concerned about what’s trending now with Halloween decorating. Back in the middle of the last century, we just carved a pumpkin. Then we set it out on the front porch so the older kids could kick it off the steps or smash it on the roof of the grouchy old neighbor’s car. Wait……..oh yeah; I keep my car in the garage.

As I was saying, All Hallows Eve is so named because it refers to the night before All Saints Day. That hardly seems to warrant massive decorating, especially the kind that conjures the grave which is a destination not that far off for some of us. (Not me you understand. Regular Observer readers will recall that the Death Clock is giving me until 2043.)     

The Jack-O-Lantern, perhaps the universal symbol of Halloween, was originally used to ward off evil spirits. Looking at some of the Halloween decorations festooning front porches in my neighborhood, one might suspect its role is actually to invite such creatures. I mean what’s with the skeletons and headstones, not to mention the ghastly figures?

When I was a kid the entire point of Halloween was getting neighbors to hand out candy in exchange for saying Trick or Treat. In my neighborhood in Newark, New Jersey, we never actually said those words. Instead we said something like, “I’m here for the candy.”  We didn’t need costumes either. We were already dressed like future cast members of the Sopranos.  

It seems to me that if people want to decorate for Halloween they should be placing large posters depicting Snickers and Kit-Kat bars on their lawns to let kids know what to expect. I could get behind such a movement, especially if adults of all ages were as welcome as kids to stop by and grab a package of say, red licorice.

Then, instead of spending all that money on Orange and black decorations, companies like Mars and Hershey and even Brach’s would be competing for space on your property. Imagine a lighted Happy Halloween sign (blinking optional) over your garage door sponsored by Tootsie Roll Industries. Yes, you could grant naming rights for your very own house the same way stadiums do.   

One of the things I find troubling about all this is where will it stop? How long will it be before we have to decorate our homes for St. Patrick’s Day? I don’t know about you, but my attic is already crammed with Christmas stuff. Where am I going to fit a giant Shamrock?    

Cherry Bomb

            I was listening to the radio the other day and happened upon John Mellencamp’s Cherry Bomb . It’s a pretty tune. I hadn’t heard it for a while. I downloaded it and then listened closely to the lyrics. There’s a line in the song that goes, “we were young and we were improving.” I love that line.

Mellencamp is a boomer, just a few years younger than I am. His song took me back to our so-called green years when everything was in front of us. You know, “when dancin’ meant everything.” Looking back on those years, one thing I clearly remember is we were determined to make a better world. Not only were we going to keep improving, we were going to take the whole world with us. Anything seemed possible. Obstacles were made to be removed.  

In many respects we did change the world. If you consider advances in technology, communication, medicine and civil rights for example, we done good. In terms of how we live now, or more to the point, the world we present to our children and grandchildren, I’m not so sure we improved a thing. Yes, I know old men are inclined to say, “The good old days were better.” And I try to allow for that. But I can’t help wondering whether kids growing up today will be able to look back on their adolescence and say with confidence the way John Mellencamp did, that "we were improving,” not to mention feel inspired to write a song about it.

Take the way government is run or more accurately, not run today. When I see our representatives on what passes for television news these days, they look, well…smug to me. What I see on too many faces is, “Look at me! I know how the game is played. Watch me spin!” This is while they are saying things that American people with common sense and no need for the spotlight, recognize as ludicrous.

Listen: It doesn’t matter whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican, a Tea-Party member or a Liberal. The sad truth is too many of the people we’ve elected may not be there to serve our needs. They are serving themselves. In the process they are not setting the example that Mellencamp’s Cherry Bomb references when he says, “One night, me with my big mouth a couple of guys had to put me in my place.” Who puts self serving members of the government in their place?

Adults have always had the responsibility of giving their children a secure environment where they could simply keep on improving. There was never a time in the history of the United States of America when sacrifice wasn’t a requirement. Negotiation, accommodation, consideration are all essential ingredients to getting things done and keeping the country moving ahead and, improving. Having options is one of the benefits of living in a free society. It’s also an obligation. Are we making good choices, the kind that considers the needs of our children? At this time in our history it’s hard to see how our leaders and authority figures are doing much other than improving their place in line in the Capitol’s pecking order.        

The good news, I believe is that it’s never too late to improve. We still have options and we can make better choices than we’ve made in the past. Improving is not strictly the province of the young. Yes, we’ve made plenty of mistakes but to those running our great nation I say, with a bit of contrition, there is still hope. With apologies to John Mellencamp for updating his lyrics a bit, 

Seventeen has turned sixty-five
It’s not too late, we’re still livin’
If we’ve done wrong
I hope that we’re forgiven

            Our kids deserve a better world than the one we’re giving them. Listen to Cherry Bomb, a simple song with a sweet message. While we’re at it, let’s send the song to Senator Reid and Congressman Boehner. Once upon a time dancin’ was everything to them too.