On my commute to work there’s a huge, Victorian stagecoach smack in the middle of someone’s lawn. A dead person appears to sleep inside of it, his skeletal hands dangling out the window. At night it glows with blue lights. A few blocks down there’s a shambling haunted house made out of cardboard and splattered with fake blood. Many other houses have sickly orange lights strung across them, as though they were Christmas lights that came down with malaria.
This has to stop. Christmas decorations have become increasingly more elaborate over the years--large chemistry sets recreating the eucharist ("blood goes here, wine exits here") and whatnot--but is it really necessary that Halloween follow suit?
These displays aren’t scary; they’re garish. And Halloween needs to be about the scary. It needs to be a quiet, creepy pulse tapping in your veins--not elaborate sets and lightshows.
What I find particularly disturbing is that their creators are the same people who get crazy in December as well. So they spend tons of time on the Halloween decorations, pull them down, and then spend tons of time on the Christmas decorations. I would like to visit these people door to door and suggest a variety of hobbies for them, including scrapbooking. Perhaps they could volunteer at a soup kitchen. Perhaps they could travel to interesting and exotic parts of the globe, and perhaps not come back.
I live in a condo, but if I owned a house, I would not go to these extremes. I would hang up a few choice decorations designed to elicit sharp feelings of terror--such as paper mache skeletons, the last few Supreme Court opinions authored by Antonin Scalia, and some of my recent attempts at cooking. That’s it. No need to drop three hundred at Home Depot.
Aside from Christmas, I can only think of two holidays that truly deserve this kind of in-depth decoration and design. The first is Arbor Day, because really, who doesn’t want more trees? The second is Valentine’s Day. I would greatly enjoy a world where suburban families tried to outdo each other in terms of increasingly romantic, and then erotic, lawn displays: “Honey, you’ll simply have to do better next year. The ‘Honeymoon Night’ scene was impressive last year, but the Parkers have just built recreations of the first seven chapters of the Kama Sutra. I won’t be able to face Phyllis at the PTA meeting if we can’t up our game.”
What a party pooper! Come on, they are fun to look at, even if they are garish and ridiculous. Plus, the over the top decorations easily point out where the crazies live. Dual purpose.
I just made some pretty scary pumpkin bars, thinking it would be perfectly fine to make up my own recipe. (It wasn’t.) I was wondering what on earth I could do with them, but now I know I can use them for decorating and totally freak out the neighbors. Awesome.
Halloween is not about scary; it’s about extortion. Give me some candy or I’ll let the air out of your tires - that sort of thing. For scary, though, I predict that next year George W Bush inflatable images will become common as something really scary.
I’m with Cousin Anne, only regarding my hideous ghost cupcakes. But since commenters agree with me that they look like some type of bondage mask, they’d also work for your Valentine’s Day decorating idea.
I’m your newest fan! I love this post. And, aren’t you amazed at how jack-o-lanterns aren’t just the usual triangle eyed pumpkins - people really go all out and create masterpieces when it comes to pumpkin carving! I can’t wait for Christmas.
I’m not even motivated enough to weed my flower beds, let alone string giant cobwebs to the front of my house.
I think i’m a freak because to me Christmas should last a single night, and Halloween a month. Arbor Day, however, should last 3 months.
I thought with the financial crisis looming over us, there would not be too much decoration for Halloween and Christmas. But I guess I’m wrong.
The cobwebs on my house, inside and out, are unfortunately real. They are there pretty much 12 months of the year, unless weather or shame have them removed, temporarily. (I’d rather read than clean.) At least for a couple of weeks they look festive/decorative instead of just disturbing.
Oh, and Halloween is about more than just getting all Martha scary on your dwelling: it is also about dressing skanky and calling it a “costume”. Harder to do that at Christmas, but might work for Valentine’s.
Linda—My grandmother had a plaque hanging in her kitchen that read, “Dull Women Have Immaculate Houses.”
I do agree with you that Halloween should be understadedly scary, not garish. Kind of like the first Halloween movie, which was the only truly scary one because there was minimum blood and gore..it was all suggestion and fear!