HAPPY HALLOWEEN

Let the merry bells keep ringing/ Happy Halloween to you.

There's so much to like about Halloween.  Or Harvest Time.  Or whatever PC people want o re-name it.  All Hallow's Eve.  A person who thinks names, nomenclature, onamastics are all important, I don't think the origins of the holiday are pertinent, so I don't care what you call it.  It's just a great time of year.

Of course, Autumn's zenith is Thanksgiving, one of the greatest of them all.  But Halloween has to be second.  It's the end of the best season in many ways. What other month has better weather throughout the US?  Just where is a bad place to be in the month of October?

Summer's heat is past and it's not yet cold, cold Winter for most of the nation.  Sweater weather, light jacket, sleeveless, or my favorite a long sleeve cotton tee shirt and shorts.  The sun's angle blinding you at daybreak and sundown.  Longer shadows that made me feel ten feet tall when I was younger as they would display my image, distorted like a funhouse mirror.

Crisp burning leaves that evaporate into see-your-breath air.  Soup, any kind, hot chocolate, cider, marshmallow and weenie roasts over bonfires.  Hayrides and pumpkin patches and orchard visits.  As Emily in Our Town said, "Oh Earth, you're too wonderful!"

Ok, my romantic, poetic sacrine entry is almost complete.

Notice what I left out?  No vampires, no tee-peeing, no excessive wet smoldering burning stink, no pagan or goth references, no having to have Trick-or-Treat candy x-rayed, no rake blisters in the crevices of thumb and index fingers, and a plethora of other negatives.

Along with a good scare.  When a black cat jumps out at you when you're running from a big guy whose car windows you and a buddy soaped solid (actually Gulf waxed solid).  Now that's Halloween!

Topped off by Charlie Brown and The Great Pumpkin.