Stingy Jack
It is time for the Obligatory Halloween Post! Yay!
When I decided that I was going to once again start blogging on a regular basis I knew that I would eventually have to write posts about the holidays. Not all of the holidays but the major ones that I myself celebrate with my family. I won't be writing about Ramadan or Beltane. Although the latter does sound like fun. Here let me help you.
Anyway, back to Halloween. Halloween is probably my second favorite holiday behind April Fool's Day (only because it's my birthday). A lot of people find it a hassle and say that it is too commericialized but I enjoy the hole debacle. From the costumes, to the candy, to the gawdy decorations, it's all good. That's the way that I grew up and now that I have kids of my own I like to make sure that they can experience that as well.
Every year growing up my parents would decorate our house. We never decorated much on the outside if anything at all, but the inside was done up from stem to stern. We had wall decorations, little cardboard stand-ups, and little scary knick-knacks of every kind. We always carved pumpkins into Jack O' Lanterns and my dad would clean and roast the seeds for us. The entire month of October was spent watching scary movies or catching the Halloween cartoon specials on the major networks. The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown was awesome and Garfield's Halloween Special was my favorite. My mom sometimes made me a costume or we would pick one up from K-Mart. I have never missed a year of dressing up in a costume even into adulthood.
Halloween was so much fun for me when I was a kid. I get weak in the knees for carmel apples and popcorn balls. There is something else besides the goofy costumes and going door-to-door beggin strangers for candy that I enjoy about Halloween. Something that my father imparted to me growing up. A love for all things horror. When I was real young my dad would watch horror movies and I would beg him on my hands and knees to let me watch. When he relented I would start out sitting about 4 feet in front of the tv and end up hiding behind my dad's chair. As scared as I was I never lost interest in the film. I might have been afraid to watch it but I WANTED to watch it.
As I got older it got better. I graduated from hiding to covering my face. Then I moved on to just shutting my eyes until finally I could watch a whole horror movie without blinking. Well maybe a little blinking but you get the idea. I was a kid in the 80's and that decade ushered in some of the most iconic monsters since Dracula and the Wolfman. Jason Vorhees, Michael Myers, Freddie Krueger, Pinhead from Hellraiser. (I realize Halloween was 1978 but let's not get nit-picky.)
My dad used to subscribe to Fangoria magazine and as soon as it came in the mail I would anxiously wait for him to finish reading it so I could look at it. I was a little too young to really enjoy reading the articles but I was fascinated by the pictures of gore and blood. I loved to see how the make up artists and special effects guys would work together to make a movie scary. To this day I love a good scare.
I don't know if there is a horror gene that my dad passed down to me or if was nuture over nature thing. I do know that my step-daughter loves horror but my youngest daughter has loved it since birth. That gives credibility to both theories. My son, bless him, is just like I was when I was his age. He's scared to death of horror. He'll probably grow out of it.
I'm sort of rambling on here but I wanted to give you guys an idea of why I think Halloween is so great. Being a horror fanatic is awesome but having a holiday dedicated to all things horror is epic.
Trivia: Want to know why we carve pumpkins into Jack O' Lanterns for Halloween? Click here.