Mrs. Teabody Reflects on Hallowe'en and Asks Forbearance for Rushing the Seasons

Yesterday morning I woke to pouring rain and chose for my morning walk a turtleneck, jeans, and an insulated vest, along with scarf, hat and gloves. By one o'clock I was in short sleeves and Mr. Teabody was "catching some rays" inside the secret garden. Crazy October and as we slide into its finale of Hallowe'en, I can't help recalling a day inside my classroom with an administrator and the topic of devil worship. Like most female teachers, I paid homage to the seasons and holidays by way of door decorations and bulletin boards and as this was in the days just prior to political correctness, angels and the Christ child showed up for a few weeks before Christmas with the same regularity as colorful baskets of eggs and bunnies alongside a glowing cross for a few weeks before Easter. And what teacher (like myself) was going to let Hallowe'en go by with all its cool imagery and not take advantage of the chance to decorate? I had the gamut of images bought at a local paper company featuring jack o'lanterns, the cheeriest of chubby smiling ghosts, the wackiest of witches and, yes, a couple spooky cemetery scenes. ALL in good fun.

"You won't be putting those up," my unsmiling superior said.

"What?" I asked with incredulity.

"You need to take those down," he said, pointing to two ghosts already hanging from the light fixtures.

"Why?" I persisted.

"Because it's devil worship," he answered losing patience.

"Really? Me? Worshipping the devil? Really? Can you explain to me how hanging these colorful, non-threatening, CARDBOARD pictures constitutes devil worship?" I asked as reasonably as possible.

"I don't have to," he said imperiously. "No Hallowe'en decorations. That's final."

Naturally, I complied. ( I was/am only a lowly woman, after all ) but not without the stinging sensation that I was being treated unfairly by his accusatory position on what I perceived as a harmless, even fun participation in a yearly event. He---a person not participating in Hallowe'en--was passing judgment on me-- a person who chose to participate. He was assigning his own meaning to something he knew absolutely nothing about.

That was many years ago and during the succeeding decades I have had lots of time to look with wonder at the enormous amount of decorating that goes on for Hallowe'en. Folks are creative and go to great lengths to celebrate this spooky holiday. Do I think everyone who decorates for Hallowe'en is a devil worshipper? No. Not for one second. I like the bats, the cobwebs, the skeletons. I even have my own Mr. SkeleTEA-Knee keeping an eye on Lincoln Way. There's a Hallowe'en parade in Mercersburg tonight full of ghosts and goblins and ghouls and general silliness and one on Thursday night in the Burg.  If you're offended, don't go.

In another vein, are you feeling guilty about rushing the seasons? Have you already started preparations for both Thanksgiving AND Christmas? Are you tired of feeling anxiety about it? Stick with me. I'm going to let you off the hook. You are NOT alone.

Thanksgiving is 31 days away. Two weeks ago I made my lists of what I need to do and buy and I then started shopping for that wonderful holiday with all its traditional dishes. Visit my kitchen this morning and you will see ingredients for cranberry chutney (Christmas presents) as well as ingredients for the Cocoa Crawl's Matcha-infused white hot chocolate and decadent chocolate peanut clusters on November 30. I cleaned the shed Thursday afternoon to find the paper goods to assemble holiday baskets for TYF, glass balls for the twenty-four wreaths we will be hanging on Black Friday and the Dickens Village items for part of the Christmas display in TYF. And yesterday afternoon I spent an hour and a half in my little shop putting together quite a lot of one Christmas display. Time-consuming and not easy to execute during regular business hours. Before you start being upset, you need to think that there is a big difference between preparing for just one event and preparing for several. No, I don't like rushing the season(s) either but as soon as we have our first hard frost I will have LOTS of digging up and planting to do (as will you) and I do not enjoy stringing Christmas lights outside in sub-freezing weather. For all of us, there are only so many hours in the day and as the adage goes, "Strike while the iron is hot." 

On reflection, my boss was a bit harsh in his handling of my benign decorating for Hallowe'en three decades ago, but I got over it and the experience taught me that some folks just overreact. My decorating was harmless just as all--well, mostly all - - the coming shenanigans of the next few days are harmless. And as for "rushing the season", a little advance preparation "ain't no skin off nobody else's nose" as the saying goes. We are who we are and we ALL operate on different internal schedules. And your schedule is YOUR schedule.That's the truth of it.  In fact, I have two friends who always send out their Christmas letters well after Epiphany. "Less competition," they claim. So go ahead and do as you please and/or as you need today. Buy your turkey, stick a witch on your front door and don't apologize. Or make yourself a big cuppa, don your Santa hat and do absolutely nothing. And never mind the critics. After all, what have the critics ever done for you?