Pickup my newest release: Spooky Season III!  Use promo code spooky to take an additional 20% off all purchases on Bandcamp!  Code expires at 11:59 PM UTC on Thursday, 31 October 2024—TONIGHT!

At long last, it’s here—Halloween!  Regular readers know that I love Halloween (perhaps a bit too much).  The season always seems to fly by, though, no matter how hard I try to cling to every pumpkin-spiced moment.

Yours portly was disgracefully late with putting up my decorations this year, but I’ll likely be disgracefully late taking them down, too; it’s not unheard of for me to be heading into Thanksgiving Week with a rotting Jack O’Lantern still festooning my slug-infested porch.

Speaking of, here’s a look at the Jack O’Lantern while still fresh; I did a very thorough job of scraping and scooping the little guy of his gooey innards, so he’s holding up a bit better this year:

If that dubious knife play doesn’t get you excited for Halloween, perhaps these classic Halloween posts will.

With that, here is 2 November 2024’s “TBT^4: Happy Halloween!“:

Well, I’m letting the Halloween good times roll, even though we’re now two days into November.  Last year, I posted “Memorable Monday: Happy Halloween“; Halloween fell on Monday, and I broke the chain of “TBT” posts.  I was planning on doing the same this year and doing a rare “Retro Tuesday” post, but I took a nasty spill and missed the window.  D’oh!

Well, what else can be said that hasn’t already been written?  Halloween is awesome.  Maybe creeping it a few days into November is a good way to combat “Christmas Creep.”  Indeed, I’m playing a gig tomorrow, and will likely play some Halloween tunes.

With that, here is 28 October 2021’s “TBT^2: Happy Halloween“:

Another Halloween is nearly here!  This year, Halloween falls on a Sunday, which has thrown everyone into a state of chaos trying to figure out when to trick-or-treat (the correct answer is “Saturday”).

October always passes by so quickly, no matter how much I try to savor the season.  Predictably, it’s gotten warmer here again after a week or so of blissfully autumnal weather, though the forecast for the Spooktacular is looking appropriately cool.  If it gets cool enough, I’ll brew some coffee and make some hot chocolate for guests.  As long as it doesn’t rain, I’m happy!

In the tradition of the last two “Happy Halloween!” posts (the original and last year’s TBT), here is this year’s Jack O’Lantern:

I don’t have much more to add, so with that, here is 29 October 2020’s “TBT: Happy Halloween!“:

Halloween is nearly here!  I love Halloween, so I had to dedicate this week’s TBT to last year’s Halloween post.  This Halloween is particularly fun, as I’m hosting my annual Spooktacular this Friday evening (information here).

It’s been a good Halloween season.  My girlfriend and I carved pumpkins this weekend.  It was her first time, but she carved far more elaborate ones than I did.  See for yourself:

Her’s are the ones on the left—the bat and the drooling pumpkin.  Mine are on the right—the more traditional snaggle-toothed variety.  The one on the bottom right reminds me of King Kong.

We’ve also watched both Halloween and Halloween II, so we’ve pretty much checked off all the boxes.

With that, here’s 31 October 2019’s “Happy Halloween!“:

It’s Halloween!  All the build-up, all the ghost stories, it’s finally here!

Last night I took the opportunity to carve my one of the two pumpkins I picked up earlier in the month ($4 a pop!).  He’s the cheeky little guy pictured above, and in the photo collage below (I’m getting fancy with the production values in this post).

His brother was stolen off my front porch Wednesday night.  I’d just gotten in bed and switched off the lights when I heard some tires squealing.  Thinking it was one of my neighbor’s buddies hydroplaning on the wet street, I didn’t think much of it, until my neighbor began shouting for me minutes later!

I threw on a t-shirt and he and a friend reported that a big dude ran up to the porch and grabbed something.  Sure enough, one of the big fat pumpkins was gone!  Darn teenagers and their Halloween hijinks.

But I suppose that’s all part of the fun of Halloween (although I wanted to carve another one of these little guys).  Tonight I’ll get to see my little niece and nephews toddling around their neighborhood, provided it’s not raining and storming, as the forecast predicts.

As I wrote Monday, Halloween in South Carolina is always hot—and muggy.  The forecast for tomorrow calls for a high of 85 degrees, and a low of 50—talk about bipolar.  Let’s hope the lower end of that is while we’re trick-or-treating.  While I was putting out my pumpkin last night, it was decidedly un-autumnal, with thick, humid air all around.

Halloween gets a bad rap among us evangelical Christians, but its roots are deeply Christian.  My new blogger buddy NEO of Nebraska Energy Observer has a piece up today about All Saints’ Day Eve.  In it, he links to an essay by Holly Scheer at The Federalist, “Christians Used To Do Halloween Better Than Pagans.”  Scheer argues that, rather than All Saints’ Day being glommed onto the existing Celtic festival of Samhain, the tradition goes back to the early Church.  It was a way to honor martyrs for Christ.

The name and date for “All Saints’ Day” were affixed later, by Pope Gregory III, but the tradition was well-founded in Christendom.  The practice of “trick-or-treating,” which Scheer points out developed in the late Middle Ages, originated with children going door-to-door asking for food in exchange for prayers.

Like so many other things that are good and true (and fun!), traditionalists and conservative Christians have had the Truth stripped from them, instead wrapped up in a gauzy, pagan-friendly narrative.  But it wasn’t the Christians who stole Halloween; according to Scheer, it’s the other way around—a bigger myth than those non-existent razor blades in children’s apples.

Regardless, I’m thrilled to celebrate some spooky fun with the family.  Be safe out there, have fun, and Happy Halloween!

Mwahahahahahaha!

—TPP