October 1st is Friday, and marks the official start and observation of the Halloween season at the wHoReS.  Fiddy has so graciously let me burgle Friday night away from him, and being the selfish bastard that I am I am claiming the entire weekend — but for a good cause.

Everyone is invited to spend the entire weekend at the wHoReS.  Friday’s Halloween commencement starts at… er, well, whenever anyone wants to get there after 6:00pm.  We are inviting you, our friends, to the holiest of holies — the most sacred act of decorating the wHoReS for Halloween.  As Fiddy so succinctly put it "We’re going to Halloween the fuck out of your house."  Thank you, I’ve never heard anyone use Halloween as a verb before.  I’ll have to remember that.

Bring your jammies and sleeping gear, because once the house is in appropriate order the rest of the days are designated as a "Useless Turd Weekend".  Let me define that for anyone not familiar with this concept: being a useless turd means laying about in a dark, cool house watching movies, sleeping and basically re-charging your biological batteries & soul in a stress-free environment.  That is going to go on until we kick people out on Sunday. 

Folks are free to come and go as they please.  There’s plenty of nooks to put people in at the wHoReS, so don’t fear for sleeping space but sleeping bags, air-mattresses and blankets might be a good idea to bring along.  Also, seeing as the wHoReS is gearing up for a killer Halloween party later in the month, we are making this a commune-like BFE (Bring For Everyone) event.  Bring some munchies, drinks, alcohol and solid food to contribute to the communal eatery pile for this weekend.  Bring some cash because we’re likely to order pizza or venture out at some point for Chinese take-out and/or burgers (or other such delicacies).

We will start with the traditional The Nightmare Before Christmas (Jebus bless Tim Burton) and move on to other Halloween-ish movies (good, bad and cheesy movies… and good bad cheesy movies — there is a difference) until that theme gets voted off the island, and then we will resume with other entertaining media.  Bring any movies you think would be entertaining, but don’t be disappointed if they don’t get watched.  I have at least one or two flicks I need to inflict upon you people, so be prepared.

One final note, I pushed a perfectly good blog post off the radar to post this announcement — it’s the one directly below what you are reading here.  Don’t forget to read it before you go gallivanting off to other destinations on the InterWeb.  I hate to think that I wasted perfectly good time ranting and raving for your amusement only to never have it read.

Message ends.

Every year.

Every damned year the commercial juggernaut winds it’s spring a little tighter and steps up the date, that invisible line that denotes the winter holidays, most notable amongst them being Christmas.  For criminy’s sake, we’ve barely broken Fall’s hymen… give us a chance to break her in a bit before we kick her to the curb to let Winter’s icy feet warm beneath our sheets.

There’s no disguising the fact that I am a Halloween fan.  I love the Fall season and Halloween is the greatest way to celebrate it — give the devil his due, so to speak.  Halloween is a voluntary holiday, widely recognized but not federally mandated.  There are no bank closures; no government employees get the day off (which is a bit of a shocker there).  Everyone is allowed to take or leave it at his or her own discretion.

Halloween is a time of year when folks can let their guard down and have some fun, to let their inner eight-year-old bubble to the surface and help them take life a little less seriously for a while.  It lets people be silly without a license, and that’s a dandy thing to be every so often.

Christmas is a mandatory holiday.  Regardless of your level of recognition and celebration, it still seeps into your life.  Businesses, banks and governments shut down.  The stores transform into shark infested waters that you dive into with an albacore tuna strapped to your back — cut, bleeding and chumming the waters.  It becomes a sales fiesta and common decency is a piñata that gets beat to hell with a frenzied stick.

The biggest kernel stuck in my craw is this: it seems that no sooner do the stores put out Halloween decorations and other accoutrements, then they are shoving it down and back to make room for Christmas crap.  Truly, it’s ridiculous.  You start to see Halloween stuff around September 1st, with the hardcore push starting around the end of September — 2 months worth of exposure, and that’s being generous.  With Christmas, product is on the shelves in mid September with the first rush hitting November 1st, and the really big push happening after November 26th.  All told 3½ to 4 months, and it starts earlier every single year.

I don’t want to see a happy, jolly little elf sitting on a shelf (and getting top billing, no less) next to the pumpkin that bleeds from the eyes when you plug it in.  It’s just wrong.  Unless of course you make the elf bleed instead.  From the ass.  Santa’s little elf-whore that got gang-banged by the other elves when they "circled the wagons" in the North Pole elf dormitory.  Plug him and watch the red fountain flow… see the animatronic rictus of pain writhe across his face.

Ahem.

Don’t even go looking for Thanksgiving merchandise.  While I don’t necessarily buy up all the turkey and Pilgrim crap I can find, nor do I really decorate for that portion of the season, I do think that all holidays should be allowed fair representation in the stores for those that do.

Don’t get me wrong.  I enjoy Christmas, but obviously not for the "birth of Christ" aspect of it.  At the very least, it should be a reminder to spend time with your family and friends.  After all, the government has designated it a federal holiday so you should have a good chance of having some time off to do so.  What it should not be — and I know this is a trite and well-traveled path — is an excuse to be a decent person for a few days when otherwise you are an outrageous, unmitigated asshole.  If you’re going to be decent human being, it should be 365/24/7, or at least as close as possible.  It’s a life-choice, not a seasonal change.

The commercialism of the Christmas holiday is not what bothers me so much as the steamroller effect.  Hell, I embrace being able to buy what I like to celebrate how I like.  If Halloween had no commercial element, I wouldn’t be able to get all the groovy decorations and effects that I love so much… and let’s give a great big hand to Don Post and the other people who have been releasing more and more gobs of realistic horror and gothic designs to the Halloween market each year (I have a tendency to steer clear of the "cute" decorations).  I freely admit that I’m a consumer whore.  I live in a capitalist nation and I embrace that.

But…

Don’t shove things down my throat.  Don’t overshadow one (or more) perfectly enjoyable holiday in favor or another, especially if the holiday taking precedence offers a bouquet of peace in one outstretched hand and a Louisville Slugger of animosity in the other hand hidden behind it’s back.  Retract the creeping commercial glacier dates a bit and let Halloween catch its breath.  Don’t assault me with black and orange on one side, and red, green and white one the other.  Keep Christ in Christmas and out of my candy bowl.  Take a lesson from Jack Skellington.

Good night kiddies, and unpleasant dreams.