Within a short drive from here, there are still a number of beautiful private properties with charm and character, i.e., yards where developers haven’t cut down every tree and haven’t covered every square inch of ground with high-maintenance, nitrogen-leaching grass.
Some of those houses have beautiful Autumn decorations, and they capture the mystery and color of the season in an understated, elegant way.
If you’ve got young kids, then it’s fun to decorate for Halloween with cartoonish ghouls and other delights. For example, when they have the time and energy, my son and daughter-in-law do a good job with decking the halls for the primary school crowd.
Instead of the usual ghoulies and ghosties, though, I’ve been wracking my brain to find an adult theme that reflects the disconsolate romance rather than the spookiness of Fall.
For example, I like the melancholy of Early American primitives, reproductions of which have been mass-produced by the ton, so you don’t have to go broke buying antiques to capture the spirit of people who “made do” by turning ordinary objects into works of art.
An element that is obvious in the natural world but hard to capture in ours is the juxtaposition of opposites, the gloom of shorter days versus the glorious color of Autumn foliage. This time of year is dramatic rather than pretty, and foreboding rather than cute.
Halloween is becoming a bigger and bigger holiday, far surpassing Thanksgiving in retail sales. It is by nature communal and that’s much more to my liking than forced extended family get-togethers in someone else’s house. I enjoy seeing the neighborhood kids and their parents, even the pre-teens who act goofy in a last hoorah to childish things.
So, for me and perhaps others, Halloween is more an opportunity to make contact with other people rather than to scare the heck out of them, and to collectively celebrate the end of the growing season and confirm friendship’s ties before the long winter.
It’s reflective of the dread and uncertainty of what is to come, but with the reassurance that we are not alone in facing those challenges. And the fact that it’s mostly a children’s holiday makes it a time of joy, innocence – and hope.