When I was a small child (a fact that I think about every day now) we lived in a trailer park outside of my very small home town. We would have Thanksgiving dinner out our own home, which would be a very small affair indeed. In at least one year, we had a candle as out centerpiece which was shaped in the style of a turkey, all brown and gold with a red wattle on his neck and his tail fanned out traditionally. I thought it was the best thing ever.

We would also present ourselves at my grandmother’s for Thanksgiving dinner as well, which was held earlier in the day, and was a far more elaborate affair, with huge centerpieces (looking rather like the Harvest Glow centerpiece featured here) in the midst of the table, and plate after plate of food, and my two great-grandmothers attending, and all kinds of hoopla. If she were doing it today, I suspect she would order it from 1-800-Flowers — I should hope! Certainly they would meet her standards and approval.

Which centerpiece did I like best, and which dinner? That’s what I want my daughter to learn, so she can make up her own mind, when it comes time for her to choose a centerpiece someday.

Nuts!

It’s not just something you say when the enemy commander calls on you to surrender a town. It’s a whole bowl of sweet, salty, flavorful — oh, good lord, I love nuts. Pecans, cashes, pistachios, walnuts, you name it, I’m a nut freak. I never had enogh gourmet nuts as a child, nor as an adult, mostly because I look at them as a luxury. But as I’m sitting here in the dim early a.m. without any breakfast, looking at the Zenobia nuts on the net site, there’s a gnawing hunger inside me for –Select mixed nuts. Easily the most fun eating nuts you can have. What’s next? A cashew? An almond? A filbert? Tasty, and roasted all together for a savory crunch. Yes, these will do. But wait–

Pistachios, Turkish or Californian. How to choose? Pistachios are like drugs to me. I can literally eat myself sick with them. Eleven dollars a pound? I must resist the good price . . . .

Volume discounts? I would die in a pistachio coma.

And the elegantly bagged nuts are great gifts, and nut - thing (heh) says Christmas (other than mangers) than the humble, tasty, lovely nut. Peanuts, macadamias, this site has every nut I have ever loved and hungered for. Go ahead. Open up the site. Order some nuts. You know your family loves them.

The world rolls over into its new Beltane year., and the leaves tumble down one after the other, endless firefall of red and gold and brown. A new year, to me, and I give thanks for it, for the ripening harvest into the mid-autumn, the fading November, the promised December.

To celebrate, to lay out the Thanksgiving decorations, to hanging up the leaves, to place the cornucopia on the table, corn, pumpkins and corn pouring forth in a river of smoky vegetable wealth. The candles will line the table, some taller, some shorter, in smart ranks, amidst scattered maples leaves. The kitchen light will floor through the curtains across the table tops, glowing through hurricane glasses full of floating cranberries, scattering pools of scarlet light at their feet, little candles drifing among them with sparking little tongues of flame.

Ever plate will have a single red maple leaf laying like a gift from the trees as they fall into slumber,a naplin atop that, tied closed with twine and another leaf, a guest’s name written on it, acknowledgment that we too will fall like leaves, some day. Nature brough close to us, no separation, no shadow betwen us and them, just a the cold wind shaking the trees, us, the house, and the promise of snow to come, some day soon.

–at least so far as my own (and Bonnie’s) intentions go–we are taking the pledge. The handmade pledge, that is. I hate Christmas, which is a damning statement, but it is mostly an attitude that has been fostered by the American-style celebration thereof: ie, wasteful conspicious consumption. Now I have to drag an infant around through it. No thank you. I’ve seen the results of that with other people’s parenting.

I don’t know what this means I’ll be getting anyone. Nothing, likely, which fits into my modus operandi just as well.

My traditional worldview has always focussed on autumn being the New Year. Maybe it’s the Celt in me coming out, maybe because I was born in the fall, maybe because the new year of school begins then. I don’t know: but I have another reason to look at the fall as a new time, particularly October, which I unfailingly now associate with the year I spent working at Brookside. The place was all-over Halloween goods, and the whole place is burned into my mind as another part of my autumnal-new years association.

Nor can I forget the many long hours I spent behind the jewelry counter there, either. Gold and diamond hoop earrings–one may suppose–glass beads, dangling things. Rings, necklaces. Every day I would rearrange them. I’d move the earrings to different arms of the earring trees or space them out as they got sold. There is a modest art to it, arranging the colors to coordinate, or the styles so they don’t overlap and hang over each other like octopi at the fish market. Some resembled this carved red jade and gold set here, which I especially like because it looks like some of the jade pieces in the Chinese section of the Nelson-Atkins Museum. Women (and sometimes men) would come in and take a lot of pleasure in shopping for their special piece of jewelry. I suppose it’s not quite the same doing it on the web, but if you aren’t anywhere near the shop I used to work at, Ross Simons’ site is almost as good (and fun,) with their money-back guarantee. A fifty-year old tradition themselves, Ross Simons Jewelry has literally thousands of designer choices at their online boutique, and all without the trouble of going out in public to deal with the Christmas rush–my least favorite part of any shopping experience this time of year. Their range of prices is competitive too, from the very high end to items that will fit in anyone’s holiday budget, a good things in these troubled economic times.

It wouldn’t be my first choice, going back to that old job (as much as I enjoyed it, I have to support a child now,) but browsing a website like Ross Simon’s brings back fond memories of that time. It just makes you feel good.

Creepy as it might seem, I really like the Burger King “King”–you know, the one with the weird plasticy-looking head who never speaks but appears at strange times in strange situations, always offering Burger King food? Yes, so I went looking for halloween costumes of him online, and first place I checked was (natch) halloweenadventures.com. I did a search under period costumes, and with just a little hunting there he was–as cheerful as he was on TV. (And fully licensed).

Why the King? Well, his laconic manner but friendly, generous ways appeal to me, and his bizarre appearances in private and public tickle my funnybone. Looming through the window at daybreak? Waking up in bed next to him? Running down the street and getting hit by cabs? What’s not to like. That has me written all over it.

And what’s not to like about the site. There’s a huge selection, and everything is easy to find. You can sort by price and popularity, review costumes, and if something is sold out, you can be notified when it’s available. (Alas I will have to await notification on the King.) There’s many categories–adults, children, pets (including funny Corpse Bride dog costumes!), and even a blog of costume news.

Too bad they don’t have the Mighty Monarch and Dr Girlfriend from the Venture Brothers! Couldn’t find them. Maybe bext year!

pumpkins 2006, originally uploaded by sparrowsfall.

Bonnie and I are pretty big on Halloween. We love to carve jack o’ lanterns, and we always have trick-or-treat–usually upwards of what seems a hundred children will mob us as the evening goes by. This year the added “treat” is the presence of our own little fat jack o’ lantern, Sparrow. Of course she won’t “get” it (even if she does get dressed as Batman,) but that will come next year, or the year after.

That aside, I’ve been thinking in recent days about how to celebrate this Halloween just a little more. I find online a Ready-Made-ish site called Celebrations.com with some nifty ideas worth trying out.

One notion they have is to create a front-yard graveyard. I’ve always been a fan of these, but often it’s just a few wooden tombstones with puns on them scattered higgledy-piggledy on the grass. I want to erect them along all the foliage that’s grown up by the front walk, where Henrietta the tree leans over it. They talk about using hard foam (florist’s foam, I assume) or prefab tombstones, but I think since I have plenty of access to cardboard that I can make (pretty disposable) headstones out of that which will pass muster in the dark. If it rains they’ll be easy enough to move by pulling them up by their stakes. I’d also put a pumpkin on each grave, which should be an eerie sight.

They also have tips for the party itself (Halloween is conveniently on a Friday night this year) including the drinks and Halloween party food. The porch should be easy to festoon with cobwebs in all the corners and across the top of the archway (which, in truth, it almost is already–the spiders have been busy this summer) and pumpkins as well, with candles leading up the walk. We already have our Halloween “wreath”–black metal from Target, circa 2005–hung on the door, so a few more candles on the porch and the lights turned down low should set the mood. They also mention appropriate mood music and sound effects, and I happen to have a collection of MP3s that will fit the bill.

Bonnie is a good hand at baking, so the Witch Finger Cookies will be easy enough, and making spider’s webs out of sour cream on the guacamole will be well within her able cake-decorating skills. Since Allie will no longer be pregnant, we can enjoy Halloween cocktails–the Pumpkin Punch and the Ghost-inis catch my eye. I think we can get rubber eyeballs and such from US Toy so the chilling objects in the Ghost-inis should be fun. Black ring-spiders can go around the stems of the glasses, or on the rims, and a little cobweb can be strung on the glasses as they sit on the bar. If we can dig up a black-light and dim the room, the white eyeballs would glow in the drink alarmingly. No one will forget that!
Now all we need is a solid ghost-list–pardon me, guest list–and we’ll be set to go!

Who can help? Helping like Batman, that is! And everyone who knows me is, I am sure, aware of my infatuation with superheroes. Bam, biff, and all that, eh? Eh? Spottswood, I’m looking your way.
I am baby, I am the night.

Well, she owns the night, when she feels like it, and I suppose she should be costumed like it. She would be costumed cute as cute could be, in this neat little Adam West-style Batman number. . . .

She doesn’t specifically enjoy Halloween yet–she doesn’t even know boo, if you pardon the pun, about anything about anything. holidays, weekdays, Labor Day, whatever. But knowing what I know about my daughter, I’m think that candy is going to appeal to her a great deal. This is a child who will have a conniption at the opportunity to eat applesauce. I think Hershey’s bars will do just as well. Imagine the mess.
Considering getting a Halloween outfit for her, I imagine that shopping online for a superhero costume, at a site like halloweenadventure.com, is a better thing than taking a child into a bricks-and-mortar costume shop these days. Even in so-called “family-friendly shops”, the risque, trampy costumes are all over, and can be pretty inappropriate for children to look at. But with the online experience, shopping around at Halloween costume stores, you can find the kid’s section, settle down with the tot, and check out only you want her to see. I find that a useful feature.

Besides, low cost, avoiding the roads and not burning up gas–these things appeal to me too, as well as not having to load her up in the car. My little bat-person only has to go out on a crisp autumn evening for trick-or-treating, not grueling shopping.