Fall is a time for bonfires and roasted turkeys. Every day is one day closer to Semester Break and just a little bit shorter than the day before. Of all the four seasons, autumn sees the most holidays and the most drastic changes in weather. It welcomes back football season and the crisp temperatures that are a happy exchange from Georgia’s 100 degree summer days. Nineteenth century poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley once said, “There is a harmony in autumn, and a luster in the sky, which through the summer is not heard or seen, as if it could not be, as if it had not been.” That harmony transitions us from the glorious feelings of eternal youth and freedom that summer evokes to the frozen breath and time of the winter months.

Fall officially started on September 22 in the northern hemisphere, but its affects were not felt until mid-October. Now we are entering November, the month of chrysanthemums, Topaz, and pumpkin pie. In three short weeks it will be time to sit around the dining room table and give thanks for the blessings we have been given. But first, we must endure trick-or-treaters and the squishy insides of pumpkins. Yep, Halloween is here again.

Luckily, for those of us who cannot fathom a worse holiday than this, Halloween is only one night a year. But that one night is so filled with nonsense that it seems to last for a considerably longer span of time. One must open up one’s door to the children of complete strangers and somehow manage not to make insulting remarks about the lackluster, extremely un-creative costumes worn by the little beggars. Each child threatens, “Trick-or treat,” but most only are driven by greed and the promise of sugar-rushes. Parents not only encourage this as a “fun tradition,” but often participate themselves.  

Every year, poor Linus of “Peanuts” makes Halloween one of the most depressing holidays conceivable by his ritual squatting in a pumpkin patch, awaiting the arrival of “The Great Pumpkin.” And every year, he is disappointed. I feel the same way. Every year I wait for something special to prove to me the worth of the holiday, but every year I too am disappointed.

I love fall, don’t get me wrong. But Halloween I could gladly do without.