Killing Halloween – Post Pumpkin Observations

The Great Pumpkin has come and gone, leaving you all with nothing but a gory Grinch. Allow me to explain.

Underneath the naughty nightie of North America, the Halloween merchandising machine (or Magic Bullet if you prefer) extracts an estimated 3.3 billion dollars in royal revenue from our rosy red rectums (this does not include “treat” sales from what I gather). Knowing this, it’s easy to accept that the bloated bean counters and cattlemen of currency will never truly bury All Hallows Eve beneath the land of the leaves - not until the day after its no longer profitable of course - so why do I feel so used? Sore like a morning prostitute left with nothing but a sock full of pennies and a bad case of rug burn on my forehead? On Halloween night, we were "visited" almost 100 glorious ghosts and gory goblins howling up at us from the veranda, prompting two trips to the local convenience store to replenish ghoulish goodies for the kiddies. Halloween is most certainly undead in our suburban neighborhood, but there was something wrong. It was as if someone had tipped the casket to reveal that it wasn’t Uncle Fester inside, it was bags of fake snow, spools of red ribbon and uneaten fruit cake added for weight.

I slipped out over the weekend to purchase some last minute Halloween horrors to amp up the sweet scares on the front porch and possibly snag a few bags of back up bars for the spooky specters (which still wasn’t enough). It was there that I was confronted by something truly frightening – Christmas crap – and not just a light dusting of it either. That right, October 28th and there I was, lost in an aisle of ornaments, snow blinded by old man Santa stuff and Frosty the Snowman’s charcoal stare. Halloween items were pushed to the clearance bins or hidden away at the back like unwanted step children at a fine family gathering. I guess that when the granddaddy of money making holidays is but two scant months away, they have to amp up the presentation, wouldn’t want us to forget now would they?

I was oddly offended. I grabbed my full sized plastic skeleton (when I could’ve just used a real one from my cellar anyway) and casually made my way up to the check out counter, chewing it all up as a cannibal often does. The cashier was pricing miniature snow globes featuring the red menace himself, perched high atop his crimson sleigh - setting up shop in the white washed winter sky like a drop of blood on colorless cotton sheets. I await for her to shuffle her chores from the counter top and mention that I found it funny that it’s not even Halloween yet and I was being assaulted by Christmas stuff like it but a fortnight way. She nods at me like cashiers often do and presents me with her best pacification smile; “I know, it’s crazy, hey?” I wonder if she thinks that “fortnight” means spending an evening in a wooden shack, but I choose to carry on.

To truly test if she was paying attention I consider telling her that it probably meant less work for the marketing man-machines in head office to redesign/reprint signage stating “Welcome Santa!” instead of “Welcome Satan!” but she wouldn’t have found it funny even if they do both wear red suits. Christmas spending this year is expected to surpass 450 billion bucks, that’s enough get any son of god out of bed in the morning much less some corporate whore eager to beat us to death with him.

I left the store feeling like I had been bled dry and thought that maybe next year we’d be expected to hand out Christmas candy to Halloween kids at the door dressed like elves, snowmen and even the big red whore himself.

Ho Ho Ho... indeed.

iPod played "Tom Waits - Christmas Card From A Hooker In Minneapolis" while posting