Friday — or tomorrow in Pierce County — is Halloween.
Whoop-ti-do. Please wake me when it’s over. Even if it is a 48 hour event.
Friday night’s football game should be a dandy. It always is. But, I could do without the Halloween- y stuff. I would probably go as a Pirate and that would be frowned upon in these here parts.
I suppose I could observe the day just a wee tiny bit by reading “The Raven” by Edgar Allen Poe.
It’s about the only thing close to Halloween that I like. Of course, it is more about the love of poetry and words than anything else.
If you think about it, you can’t spell poetry without P-O-E.
Poe actually set it in December and not October, when he was pondering weak and weary.
It is a poem lamenting a lost love and I can certainly relate to that.
All of the ones I have ever been interested in all my dating days have all been lost.
In fact, every time I ever asked for a second date, I got the same answer the raven gave.
Nevermore.
The Halloween holiday ranks up there with Valentine’s Day on my personal list of holiday rankings.
Both are scary, frightening and plumb nearly useless to me.
I just never have cared about it.
If it’s your thing, that’s fine. It’s just not mine.
I prefer to think on the bright and happy and jolly, not the dark, fearful and scary.
There’s plenty of darkness, fear and scariness in the world already.
Maybe we could come up with an ”Un-Halloween Day.”
A-ha! I’ve got it. It would be similar to the unbirthday.
If you recall, the concept of an unbirthday first appeared in Lewis Carroll's 1871 novel Through the Looking-Glass. The concept gave rise to the whimsical The Unbirthday Song in the 1951 animated feature film Alice in Wonderland.
In Through the Looking- Glass, Humpty Dumpty explains the concept to Alice.
In the 1951 Disney animated film Alice in Wonderland, Alice stumbles upon the Mad Hatter, the March Hare and the Dormouse having an unbirthday party and singing The Unbirthday Song written by Mack David, Al Hoffman and Jerry Livingston. Alice at first does not understand what an unbirthday is, but when the Mad Hatter explains it to her, she realizes it is her unbirthday as well, and receives an unbirthday cake from the Mad Hatter.
Since Halloween is not my birthday and I don’t celebrate it as Halloween, it is both my unbirthday and unHalloween at the same time.
This calls for a celebration.
We can eat Doritos, chocolate chip cookies, have a party cake and ice cream and have a grand ol’ time.
We don’t have to dress up in costumes. We don’t have to be scared out of our wits or lament about lost loves.
We just celebrate. And as for Halloween, we worry about it Never- more.
