There is a twinge of fall in the air. The weather has been pleasant and today will have temperatures in the seventies, so it isn’t exactly cold. It may even get up to 90 by Sunday. I had a fun paddle on Monday morning. Of course the days are shorter, so when I go out first thing in the morning, the drive to the lake is in the dark. I launched into a gray morning, with the mists hugging the hills. My kayak is warm for paddling, but it really wasn’t that cold out. I was beginning to think about the four months when the canoes and kayaks spend most of the time in storage. November, December, January and February are often months that I don’t get onto the water. It is possible to paddle all 12 months, but rarely in the same year. Once the ice gets going on the lake, I take a break.

I get a longer paddling season than some. I had a home repair job to tackle on Monday and ended up leaving the kayak on the car until after work yesterday. Driving around town, I got a few questions about paddling. Some people thought that it was pretty late in the season to be paddling. My usual comment is, “If the water is liquid, it is a good time to paddle.”

There are lots of ways to tell that the seasons are changing. The garden is slowing down, some of the grass in the yard is beginning to go dormant. The brightest of the fall colors have passed, with leaves beginning to fall from the trees and bushes. The seasons come and go and the times are changing.

They’re doing a sort of remodel, or at least a reorganization at the grocery store where I shop most often. They moved the liquor department into the main store and in its place have the seasonal items. That means that there is an entire area of the store devoted to Halloween. That section seems to mostly have plastic decorations, lights, candies, and the like. The pumpkins are in huge boxes outside of the store. And the grocery store isn’t the only place getting into the pumpkin business. The hardware store has a large tent outdoors filled with pumpkins. Just down the road from home a landscape business has a big sign and a display of pumpkins. It seems that most retailers are taking advantage of the increased sales for Halloween.

I don’t think that people think of pumpkins as food items much these days. Of course there are lots of delicious foods that come from pumpkins: pumpkin pie, pumpkin bread, pumpkin soup. But they are sold as ornamental items to be parts of yard displays, to be painted and carved as decorations. At least a lot of stores that don’t normally sell food are in the pumpkin business this month.

I’m not sure that I really understand all of the enthusiasm over Halloween. We enjoyed the holiday as kids, getting dressed up and going trick or treating around the town. But I don’t think that we spent much energy preparing. We’d have some Halloween-themed art projects in school about a week before the holiday and we’d start thinking about our costumes. We’d raid the closets and attic in search of things to wear. I think I went as a “bum” several years. All it takes are some old and ill-fitting clothes. If you want to get fancy, you can have your mom or sisters put a few black dots on your chin to look like beard stubble. Never mind that I have never had black hair. I always went for black beard stubble as a kid.

It was an evening and then we went on with our lives.

As near as I can figure, Halloween has become much more of an adult holiday these days. There are entire storefronts, empty during the rest of the year, filled with costume shops. You can buy and rent elaborate costumes. And for those who want to get into it, there are a lot of possibilities for lawn and home decorations. Just down the street we have a neighbor who really gets into it. They’ve strung orange lights all around their yard, placed a cover over their post lamp to look like a pumpkin. Others make artificial graveyards in their lawn. A few years ago inflatable decorations were popular in our neighborhood. There seem to be a few less of those this year.

I’ve got nothing against the celebration. I just don’t understand it. We’ll have a bowl of candy ready and we will enjoy seeing the neighborhood kids in their costumes, but that is about it for our celebration. We don’t get into extensive decoration for any holiday and if we were to pick one, I don’t think Halloween raises that much excitement for us. I’m not superstitious. I don’t believe in ghosts. I’m not afraid of cemeteries. I like the neighbor’s black cat. I do put some energy into our annual all saints recognition on the first Sunday of November each year and this year All Saints falls on a Sunday, so we’ll have a time of remembrance in our worship. But I’m not worried about unsettled souls rambling through the neighborhood on the evening before.

The spirits that are the most frightening to me are the liquid ones, sometimes consumed in excess by party-goers and can result in poor decisions and dangerous driving.

But there are people who are passionate about the holiday. In Lexington, Kentucky, hundreds of residents have signed a petition urging county officials to move Halloween to October 30 this year. They are concerned that a University of Kentucky home football game and the Breeders Cup are both on the 31st and want to move Halloween to the previous day. It seems completely amazing to me that they are petitioning county officials as the means to make the change. Why don’t they just have their Halloween parties a day early? If a children trick or treating show up a day early in our neighborhood, they’re likely to get candy. I say just make the change. Who needs approval from the County Commissioners?

Ah, but then again, I don’t really get Halloween in the first place.

I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.