All Hallows' Eve
a rant. or a love letter. or both.
10.31.24:
How strange it is to feel Samhain swirling through the wind. It carries the leaves and brushes hair from my eyes. And yet, though I’ve always felt All Hallows in my heart, today my heart feels all hollow. My favorite day of the year spent fighting away tears with their constant threats to fall. What has changed? Is it just this year and it’s insistent need to bring me down with it? I tried to chase autumnal joy through others, holding the children’s hands and running with them driveway to driveway. Our laughter followed us to every house and for a moment, it was Halloween. But it was taken from me by the continuing night. Instead of ending on childlike laughter and the magic of the thin veil, my night ended with the wrong kind of haunting feeling: the haunting of regret.
My (personal) journal entry from Halloween last year. My disappointment with my usual favorite night of the year haunted me for the entire 364 days (I write this an hour from midnight) between then and now. As the minutes pass and we grow nearer and nearer to Halloween, I once again feel my disappointment stewing. October, though the month itself still laced with the energy that can only be described as Different or October, has not been the month it once was. It’s something that makes me more emotional than it should, because it’s personal to me. Halloween is special and nobody cares anymore. I want it back.
There are the obvious reasons for the difference in feeling of the holiday: consumerism, social media, the things that make everything worse in general. Halloween has of course been commercialized my entire life, but every year it worsens. You scroll on social media and you are bombarded with 7 different pumpkin shaped pillows you NEED to go to TJ Maxx to grab. And also, what are you being for Halloween this year? What if you post it and your pics totally flop and you spent $78 on a dress you will never wear again and nobody gets the reference? Or worse, you click post and you scroll and see three people who went for the same reference as you? Oh and by the way, did you try the green fries from Burger King or what the fuck ever they were selling? And RUN don’t walk to Home Goods and get a stupid ass bowl or something you will forget about before next Halloween and then buy another stupid ass bowl next year you’ll only use once. We HAVE to take our yearly trip to Spirit Halloween so we can spend way too much money on something we won’t care about in two weeks when it’s Christmas because we all know, when the clock strikes midnight on November 1st, Mariah Carey thaws and the jingle bells start rocking.
I’d be lying if I said I’m above all of this, I thought about social media when I picked out my costume and I own way more Halloween themed mugs than necessary. It’s okay to indulge in this a bit, I just wish it wasn’t everything anymore. Halloween is not something you can buy, it’s so much More. Whatever More is, Halloween lay within it.
“Anyone could see that the wind was a special wind this night, and the darkness took a special feel because it was All Hallows’ Eve. Everything seemed cut from soft black velvet or gold or orange velvet.”
— Ray Bradbury, The Halloween Tree
Halloween is fleeting, and it’s meant to be. I resent the "Halloween-Is-Every-Day” folks. I resent Christmas merchandise being stocked halfway through September. Magic is real and we try to destroy it. October, the earthy scent of leaves, the cool air warmed by unidentified nostalgia, the Different feeling that finds it’s potency with each passing day as we draw closer to the final, and most October, day of all. Halloween could not live in any season but that of the harvest; the season of death and rebirth. The legends of All Hallows, the dance of spirits entering our world for just one night, carving faces into vegetables to ward off potentially evil spirits and keeping them lit for our protection, dressing up as spooks to blend in. None of it works without the hand of the autumnal equinox. Whether or not you believe in the legend of the veil and how thin it becomes this night, the idea of it can still bring a small bubble of nervous excitement inside of you. For one night, you are allowed, and encouraged, to believe in magic. Standing alone when the stars have made appearance on the night of Halloween, the wind blows that October wind, you cannot resist the chill that appears and runs swiftly down your spine. Halloween is one day, the only day it can be, and that is why it is special.
Halloween has also become community, something else that sadly continues to dwindle away. The most strangers I’ve ever spoken to in my life was probably on a Halloween night when I was in elementary school. We pass out candy to trick or treaters, we throw big parties, host seances, whatever the tradition be. It’s different from other holidays, those that mostly focus on those close to us. Halloween we celebrate with anyone. It’s an excuse to indulge in community, to be friends with someone you will never see again, to bring smiles to kids by giving them king-sized candy bars, talking to neighbors you’ve never even seen. Halloween is special. Let it be special.
It’s now officially midnight as I’m writing, officially Halloween; the only one we get this year. Today, I will have hot cocoa with my breakfast and a Milky Way for dinner the same as I would have when I was 9. I will dance to Monster Mash and tell ghost stories with my friends because there’s nothing more fun than scaring your own self a bit. On my morning walk, I will stop on an empty street just to let the wind blow and I know I will feel it, the special wind that feels like an ancient whisper, that feels like More. The goosebumps will cover my arms and that will be enough. On November 1st, Halloween will take it’s leave for a year and when it knocks upon my door again, I will know who is visiting before the door is open.
My sister (Lola Loftnagle) and I (Hannah Montana), Halloween, 2006
Thank you for reading if you took the time, I get really nervous about sharing my writing because it always ends up quite personal. Happy Halloween!