Top 10 Reasons to Love October & Halloween

I'm a horror and fantasy fan, so you know that I love October! I love everything about October! This is a list of ten things to love about October. I'm sure everyone will agree on at least a few of them.

The Colors

Who doesn't like the colors of autumn? The orange, brown, green, yellow, black. They are everywhere you look.

Look outside at the leaves on your tree and those falling off. Watch the wind blowing the down the street. They're spooky and beautiful and the same time.

See the oranges and greens of pumpkins. See the browns, yellows, and oranges of Indian corn.

I love these colors so much that I've made these my computer's desktop theme colors year round.

The Atmosphere

I love the whole atmosphere of October. The crisp, cooler, but not yet cold, weather. The fallen leaves crackling on the street. The cloudy autumn sky. Night starting to start earlier in the day (around 5PM here). The starlight and moon seems brighter. Halloween is in the air, can you smell it?

The Decorations

Not everyone decorates for Halloween but many do. At my house, we decorate our windows, mantles, dining table, and more. We've cut back a bit in recent years but we've kept most of our decorations. Our decorations are made up of many different types. Some include Telco Motionettes (animated robotic monster dolls), Lemax Spookytown (animated, porcelain buildings and figurines), monster dolls, rubber creatures (spiders, rats, bats, severed limbs, etc.), life-size skeleton, animated and musical figures (singing tree, a vampire that sits up in his coffin, talking skull, crypt keeper on an electric chair, etc.), pumpkins, scarecrows, and much more.

Nothing says Halloween like walking into a room filled with spooky decorations and sounds!

The Food

Not everyone sees this but I do. Now, there isn't really an October food per se but many people, especially with kids and any age parties. Usually "regular" food is taken and decorated, by cutting, dying, or icing, for Halloween. There's pumpkin pie, cookies with orange pumpkin faces, cakes decorated with all things spooky, sandwiches cut in spooky shapes, even red "bloody" fruit punch! There's something for everyone!

The Candy

Everyone, young and old, enjoys Halloween candy! Yes, I know, adults shouldn't eat as much candy as they used to for diet reasons and kids shouldn't eat too much because of the sugar making them getting hyper and cavities. Who cares? It's only once a year!

Think of all of the candy corn, the candy pumpkins, the marshmallow pumpkins, cats, and bats. It looks as good as it tastes, even if it has artificial ingredients.

Then there all of the regular retail items that get redecorated packages for Halloween, like Reece's Peanut Butter Cups. Is it a psychological by corporate America to lure consumers into buying their products? Of course! But who cares? It looks cool and feels like Halloween.

Trick-or-Treat

Trick Or Treat, Smell My Feet. Give Me Something Good To Eat!

Trick-or-treating is one of the most fun and awaited holiday events of the year, second only to Christmas. Some parents find it a chore to shop for costumes, dress their kids up, and walk door-to-door with them, but many do enjoy it - some more than their kids themselves! I don't have any kids but, if I did, I know I'd make it a gala event each and every year!

So, the kids get dressed and go out to go door-to-door to knock and receive candy, little toys, money, conversion pamphlets from Jehovah's Witnesses, or short sermons on how trick-or-treating will condemn your soul from religious fanatics - fun stuff like that! Sure, the last two can be seen as negative but turn that frown upside down because Jehovah's Witnesses are harmless and you can drive the religious nuts crazy! Good times.

The whole ritual is comforting. I won't cover egging or toilet papering because some readers might think that I'm trying to corrupt youths to a life of sin more than I already am with my other articles. The ritual is almost the same routine all around the country with slight variations. Each city or town has its own official schedules each year, depending on what the local governments decide. Everyone has to follow the schedules, so that everyone (trick-or-treaters and candy givers) is safe and on the same page. It's comforting because the whole neighborhood is doing the same thing. Trick-or-treaters see other trick-or-treaters and the camaraderie just feels safer somehow.

The Costumes

This goes with Trick-or-treating but not everyone dresses up only to collect candy and gifts on Halloween. Many schools have kids dress up for school parties. Even adults dress up for Halloween parties or masquerade balls. Kids or adults have different results (hey, that rhymes!) with kids tending to dress up as cartoon or TV characters, such as Spider-man, The Simpsons, or Sponge Bob, and adults tending to be more "adult", such as doctors, sexy vampires, maids, bodybuilders, and more. The main thing is that most everyone pretends to be something they are not for one night.

Me, I usually dressed up as a werewolf, another monster, or one time as Superman. I remember the Superman was one of the flimsy plastic masks with razor sharp edges, a rubber band that smacked my head, hands, and face, and a flammable cape with a plastic string that choked my neck and made itch. I endured the torture so that, for one day, I could fly like Superman (and hope the mask didn't blind me and make me run into a tree). The regular full-head rubber masks made my face and hands sweat like crazy and I'd have to remove them every fifteen minutes to avoid suffocation. It was torture but, damn it, I looked good!

The costumes might not be comfortable but they certainly are fun to shop for and see others wear. As a kid, costume shopping was a highlight of the year for me. The feeling that came over me when I'd enter the store and see thousands of eyeless masks was indescribable glee! It was glee or possibly the toxic fumes from the masks and hair but it felt great! Costumes galore; a horror fans dream! It might not be as fun to me as when I was a child but, to a guy that likes Harry Potter, seeing all of those costumes at one time still feels kind of magical.

The Movies

Being a horror fan, what can be spookier than seeing the month when horror is king and TV stations have marathons of horror movies? Some start around mid to late October on several channels each year. When else can you watch Michael, Freddy, Jason, Chucky, the exorcist, Leprechaun, Pinhead, Boris Karloff, Lon Chaney Jr., and Bela Lugosi all on the same channel in one week? Only in October! Plus, there are usually a few new horror movies in theaters near Halloween. This year, Saw 4 in one of them. There is usually a midnight showing of the Rock Horror Picture Show - some even allow fan participation with costumes and everything!

Pumpkins

I know that pumpkins are considered decorations but they are so much more than that. They can be seen everywhere during the autumn. Pumpkins of all sizes and shapes, from tiny baby pumpkins to gargantuan behemoths, from orange to green. Some are just set out as is, some receive painted faces, and some get carved and lit up with candles or lights - Jack O' Lanterns! Still others are cut up and made into pumpkin pie and other tasty treats!

At my house, we have a few kinds of pumpkins. In addition to one large real pumpkin, we have plastic pumpkins of all sizes, foam rubber pumpkins with creepy faces, vinyl pumpkins, scarecrows with pumpkin heads, pumpkin Pez, a copper metal pumpkin, and even a glass pumpkin! Pumpkins galore!

The Music

Who hasn't heard one or several Halloween-related songs over the years? It's impossible to not hear them.

Who doesn't recognize many of the lyrics to Bobby Pickett's oldies song, Monster Mash, and it's many variations, like Lon Chaney Jr.? He also sang Monsters Holiday. What about the wild song Ballroom Blitz by The Sweet? Michael Jackson's Thriller is a classic to some people. The Nightmare Before Christmas and the Harry Potter themes are two more favorites. And who doesn't appreciate the horror/sci-fi movie references in the unforgettable Rocky Horror Picture Show song, Science Fiction Double Feature? There are many more that I'm others can think of.

Conclusion

I hope you enjoyed this brief walk down memory lane. Have a Happy Halloween!