I love the fall, even if here in southern Louisiana, we don't have the full experience. We don't have a dramatic shift in temperatures. We don't have the brilliant expanse of forests of orange and red leaves.
Autumn comes to Louisiana with a lot of subtlety but we can feel that shift and we love it.
After the brutal heat of summer, the slightly cooler temperatures of fall are such a relief. Humidity drops. The nights require light jackets. The days grow shorter Everything is changing and I am so here for it.
In the north, I can imagine that spring comes as a dramatic relief to the brutal cold of winter, but here in southern Louisiana, we don't have that dramatic shift. Our winter days can be cold but just as often they are mild and pleasant. Some of the nicest days fall in the middle of winter. Spring brings longer days, which I enjoy, but they also bring the promise of the harsh summer heat.
Fall remains my true seasonal love.
I've always been out of place and out of sync with most of the world. I'm a misfit and a weirdo and I've learned to embrace that part of myself, but it's been a long process.
Perhaps that is part of the appeal of Spooky Season for me. I can lose myself in the shadows. Halloween embraces the misfits. We become the normal. Being strange and unusual is what everyone wants during Spooky Season.
Other holidays reek of tradition and trauma. Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas are redolent with expectations that will never be met. Give me the weird. Give me the odd. Give me the darkness.
No one expects me to show up with a twenty-pound turkey and rum cake. No one will ask me uncomfortable, too personal questions. No one will expect me to make awkward small talk around a tiny card table.
Spooky Season comes without the weight of expectations.
Also, chocolate. Lots and lots of delicious, melt-in-your-mouth chocolate.
We need more holidays like Spooky Season.
