The holidays are coming
You can see it out of the corner of your eye. A strangely familiar shape is approaching you but at the same time something seems out of place. You are nearing your destination with every step but something momentarily seems to nag you to a side, you just have to look and you just might decide you have to go deeper and see. There's something over there and it needs your attention. You look.
The Halloween ornaments are in the lawns and hanging from eves and trees of neighboring houses. First one house, then two, three, four and more. It will grow. The neighborhood will become a competition of bigger, better, "more monstrous than last year" displays mixing grotesque horror and cartoonish humor into a menagerie of rubber and plastic mayhem. The Groovy Ghoulies in one yard will serenade the neighbor's truly gross zombie beach with campy bubblegum pop. In another yard, obviously once a family but now only dressed in sheets, there is a picnic next to an overturned jalopy. Perhaps it's also Casper's birthday. I've never asked before. People are particularly frightened by black cats, so they seem to be everywhere, ubiquitous. Real ones and fake wooden ones. It gets hard to tell them apart.
It gets thick in this neck of the woods.
Soon it will turn another corner. The dead and the undead will begin to mix with the ancient and accepted Pilgrim scenes. We'll be talking turkey with our mechanic while the kids repeat their annual visit to the dentist. Cavities tend to grow in the mouths of babes, but the things that seem to separate the adults are appearing to grow smaller as winter crawls in. Meanwhile, the dampness of the cold air is growing and our need for protection tends to expand. Don the pull-overs, cardigans, layers of clothing and shield yourself against the growing frosts of winter.
The celebrations that are about to take place in the coming weeks and months have an ancient history. There is more ancestry in this season than any other in the year, and with good psychological and sociological reason: we need each other. In ancient times the community had to draw itself together and bring the harvest in. In ancient times the community would celebrate its gratitude and prepare for the dreaded winter. In ancient times the community would huddle together as tightly as it could and also help support neighbors in outlying territories. And it is from these patterns that our modern traditions arose.