spooky season is different in 2020
disclaimer: the following is food for thought. i don’t know that there is any advice or direction found below (& part of me feels like that makes this piece unfinished) but maybe we can all just sit with these ideas together. maybe there doesn’t always need to be advice. anyways, proceed.
A conversation I had in mid-September:
a friend: “I can’t believe it’s already almost the end of September”
me: “me too. It still feels like March” (a very original thought to have in 2020, I know)
a friend: “but so excited for spooky season”
me: “honestly, this entire year has been spooky season”
It’s spooky season. It’s spooky season in a spookier year.
Ask (most) any camp kid and they will probably tell you they wait ten months for two (I even wrote about this once). Well, I, like any basic fall-loving girl, wait nine months for three: October, November, December. I’m constantly chasing a state of hygge (a Danish and Norwegian word for a mood of coziness) and love how it shows up every fall in the Northeast, bringing with it apple cider in mugs cupped with two hands and the ability to finally pull out my most oversized turtlenecks. Spooky season is the opening act to my favorite play of the year.
Admittedly though, I don’t love being spooked. But even I love this month. For me, spooky season means Halloweentown marathons, Pillsbury cookies with pumpkin and ghost prints, jack-o-lanterns, and Halloween costumes. Hopefully it also means hay rides, apple picking, and pumpkin patches. It’s tame but it’s all still in the spirit of Halloween. And I’d venture to guess (maybe even assume) that even if you are more daring than me, more inclined to seek out the haunting, that what I’m about to offer still feels true.
There is a difference between spooky and scary and spooky season is not scary. You might truly feel spooked at the haunted house but deep down you know you will be okay. Because while it is true that the haunted house is spooky, it is also true that it is a production and that on the drive home you’ll laugh about how hard you screamed or how high you jumped. The same goes for the movies that come with this season. There might be truly haunting characters or scenes but they are avoidable – you can fast forward or duck beneath the covers. What I’m getting at is this: spooky season is fun largely because it is customizable, because we know the spooky things aren’t real and won’t linger into November. It is a safe way to test our limits and push our imaginations. I’d argue that it is fun to spooked but not as fun to be scared.
This year, spooky season feels scary. It feels like there may be real things haunting us, real monsters, real dangers. To put it lightly: COVID-19 is spooky. Job hunting right now is spooky. Planning for holiday tables with fewer family members is spooky. A looming winter shut down is spooky. The upcoming election is spooky. Again, to say those things are spooky is an understatement and oversimplification. 2020 feels like its own haunted house we can’t seem to find our way out of or a scary movie we can’t fast-forward or turn away from. And, unlike traditional spooky season that shows up October 1st and disappears before November, spooky season this year started in March and looks like it will be sticking around for awhile.
Like I said, it’s spooky season in an even spookier year.
& then there’s Halloween.
I still love trying on different personas every now and then. It’s a thrill to look in the mirror, blink your eyes, and see the glittery eyelids of a different person blinking back. It makes you think, just for a second, Who are you? … If you don’t check in every now and then, you might not realize the answer changes. So if you’re feeling unsettled, I highly recommend getting a different haircut or outfit or eye pencil (or guitar). It’s fun. And who doesn’t occasionally long to walk through the world as someone else for awhile?
– Mary Laura Philpott in I Miss You When I Blink
pink unicorn, 2003
I remember liking to dress up for Halloween as a kid. My favorite costume was a pink unicorn. I was a pink unicorn three years in a row.
But as I got older, I’d say for the last eight years or so, dressing up for Halloween has just felt stressful and unnecessary. I can see the appeal though. I hear Mary Laura Philpott’s point about the excitement that comes from being someone else for a moment. I just never know what to be or how to become that thing (there’s probably some deeper meaning there).
Here’s what I’m thinking about this year though: haven’t a lot of us, maybe even most of us, been playing a kind of dress up all year?
Haven’t we all tried a different haircut or outfit or eye pencil or hobby this year? This year we’ve been people with short hair and dyed hair and bleached hair. We’ve been people who “dress up” by dressing down; people who’ve traded business attire for joggers and hoodies. We’ve been chefs and athletes, musicians and dances, gamers and readers. We’ve been obsessive cleaners and toilet paper hoarders, DIY-ers, movie buffs, and so much more. I suppose that some sort of self-evolution happens every year, but this year especially it feels like we’ve been more than a few versions of ourselves.
I wonder which costumes we have tried on since March will become part of our permanent wardrobes. And, in turn, which will be neatly folded and stashed in the closet corner – to be found years from now, covered in dust: a reminder of who we were for a moment when the world turned upside down.
& I wonder, after a year of playing dress-up, how we feel about Halloween and yet another costume. Maybe this year has us craving the chance to escape. Maybe some of us can’t wait to be someone else for a day – someone who doesn’t do what we do or live where we live; someone who’s never heard of COVID-19 or wildfires or violent police.
But is anyone else a little sick of playing dress-up? Honestly, in a year that has continued to throw curveballs and shakes every time I feel like I’m firm on my feet, maybe a little clarity, a couple answers to all the questions I have, would be the spookiest thing of all this season.