Quaking in my Halloween costume

A giant skeleton hovers over the front yard. I’m sure you’ve seen similar ones. I’m guessing it stood 15 to 20 feet tall over the yard. The skeletons seem to be everywhere now. The homeowner also had a set of scary black and orange lights and miniature tomb stones. One head stone read Ichabod Crane. Two others had the names: Michael Myers and Freddy Kreuger.

A few streets down, another homeowner had four or five ghosts hanging from a tree and a large spider web with a giant spider in the middle. It looked big enough to swallow a person. I’m not overly scared of spiders. They are what they are, but I’m scared of that one. If that weren’t enough, there was a small coffin with hand reaching around from the inside. (Note to self, stay away from that house come dark. You never know what might lurk there.)

We still have ten or so days to Halloween and the decorations are on full display. The decorations of course beg the question: When did Halloween decorating become a thing? Better yet, when did it become a competition between neighbors?

A new holiday on the calendar

When we were kids my mom put up a simple pumpkin decoration in the the window. I’m pretty sure the pumpkin had more of a Thanksgiving feel than Halloween, but I won’t quibble. The neighbor put out a few stalks of corn that stood next to their door to give an autumn feel. That was it, that was the extent of the Halloween decorations.

“Yup, there’s the stalk, we’re done.”

I don’t remember Halloween decorations being such a big thing. My mom never pulled my butt out of my bed early one Saturday and said, “Okay Brian, it’s time to decorate. Go get the Halloween box out of the basement.”

That never happened.

When our kids were little, we carved a couple of jack-o’-lanterns. We put candles in them and placed them on the porch. A Halloween activity and a decoration all in one, my kind of decorating. A neighbor or two used to get into it with fogging machine, but that was the extent of it.

It’s a big time business now. Halloween decorating has exploded. Like Halloween costumes, decorating has gotten out of control. In the U.S., consumers are projected to spend an estimated $4.2 billion this year on decorations. Four point two billion dollars with a Capital B.

Watch where you step

A few weeks ago, my wife put out the little light-up pumpkin that we’ve had for years and put out every October. We put out a second wooden jack-o’-lantern. But my son’s bulldog puppy decided to take a few bits out of it. Now that I think about it, the jack-o’-lantern does look scarier now with the bite marks. In addition, my wife recently bought two Autumnal-looking Gnomes that stand on a book shelf. (If I have my way, the gnomes will go straight from the shelf to storage in the garage. Then, they will quietly end up in a garbage can! “Oh, I don’t know how they got put in trash? Oh what a shame!” Who hates gnomes like me?)

But that’s it.

Ghosts and goblins in the street

I stopped caring about Halloween decorations about 15 or 16 years ago. It happened when I took our kids out trick or treating. I was on the street watching them while they went up a nearby house. I had our dog Nittany. Everything was fine, until the homeowner’s two fake gargoyles lit up and let out a ghoulish laugh. The bright red eyes scared Nittany half to death.

She couldn’t get away from the house fast enough. I had one arm trying to hold her back. The other arm was trying to signal to the kids where I was in the dark night. “Dad, where are you?” It was straight out of a bad horror movie. Nittany was normally nice to everyone. But that night, she just wanted to get home.

And I couldn’t blame her!

Do you decorate for Halloween?