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?