Halfway to Halloween

May 4, 2024

This week marked the halfway point to Halloween, and I’m simultaneously excited, yet sad. Every year it seems to approach so slowly yet so quickly. The season passes in the blink of an eye, and before I know it I haven’t done everything I wanted to and I have to wait an entire year to experience it again.

A nook in a hutch is filled with Halloween decorations including small pumpkins, spiderwebs, and multiple spiders. A warm glow lights the scene from a bulb overhead.

Autumn truly is my favorite time to spend on earth. The way the sunlight filters through the changing leaves, the pumpkin patches, the spiced drinks and desserts. There’s nothing better than lounging around with a warm cup of tea watching a Halloween movie or going to a fall festival and having a cup of apple cider.

A bunch of orange pumpkins scattered around a pumpkin patch.

I always wish that autumn would last at least half the year, but then I fear that extending it would take away from the magic. If autumn lasted longer, would I appreciate it as much? Or would I get used to it and spend half of it thinking of it as just another season?

A view from below of a tree covered in autumn leaves.

Regardless, I spend most of the year craving it. I listen to Halloween music in April and look forward to carving jack-o-lanterns. I plan the horror novels I’ll read in September and October, eyeing them on my bookshelf and waiting for the day I’ll get to read them on a crisp, cool day.

A windowpane covered in raindrops. In the background, there is a blurred landscape of autumn trees.

I wish I could time travel to experience Halloween as a child again. I loved going to Party City to pick out my costume and watching Halloween specials on TV - even the commercials! I loved trick-or-treating around my suburban neighborhood, back when everybody decorated. If you didn’t, you were lame. I loved it when our parents would spread newspapers all over the kitchen table so we could sit there and carve our pumpkins. Nostalgia is a blessing and a curse. See you soon, autumn.

A clear vase sits on a table, filled with black rocks and fake flies. Faux autumn foliage sticks out of the top.

A garland is strung across a wall, reading "give me something good to eat". A couple of bats hang from the ceiling in front of it.

A top-down view of my legs and feet. I am wearing skeleton pajamas and black slippers with orange jack-o-lantern faces on them.

A corner of my dining room with a fake spider web hung up. There are many black plastic spiders within the web. In the foreground, there are philodendron vines hanging down from on top of the hutch.