Tomorrow is the first day of fall and it’s feeling positively…brisk outside.
To merchants, big companies and the entire national consumer industry: I know your red line has been decimated. That might be the greatest understatement of the decade. The decade we just started.
(Yikes).
But please.
We have enough chronological upheaval, don’t you think? Since March, Friday has turned to Monday which has turned to Sunday with nary a clear demarcation to be found. It was March and five minutes later it was June, and now guess what?
It’s September. Joke’s on us.
So as an ardent fall lover, I’m hoping you will do the right thing and not cancel fall this year.
We all laugh. “Earlier and earlier every year, huh?” I get it. Christmas is for the materialists and consumers. But what does one buy for fall? Some pumpkins, mums and corn stalks, maybe. A Halloween costume, a few bags of candy corn, a pumpkin spice latte?
But some of us, MANY of us, wait all year for it.
We love everything about it. The cool air, the crunching leaves, the fuzzy sweaters and tall boots, the pumpkin-everything. We love everything that fall stands for, especially that fall is the Earth’s final hurrah before it takes a much-needed break from growth and life, into dormancy and rest. Earth deserves naps too, and isn’t it beautiful when the planet reawakens in the spring, and thanks us for our patience through the long, cold winter by rewarding us with flowers, chicks, baby rabbits, babbling brooks, and Easter candy? Many of us flee to faraway destinations at spring, to celebrate the Earth coming alive again.
Why does autumn deserve so much less?
To many people, fall is a low maintenance single aunt- the one who wears frumpy sweaters, gives you a dollar, sometimes smells like moth balls, other times chicken soup. She’s Aunt Glady in the movie “Home for the Holidays.” You like her- she is sweet and content, still loves you even if you only see her once a year, even loves you when you visibly grimace when she hugs you. She doesn’t seem to require too much attention, she’s just happy with the attention she gets. We have learned that we can ignore her, and still she will come back with that beautiful smile on her face.
Halloween is Aunt Glady’s 40-year old son named Funk who still lives at home. Slightly odd and slightly goth, he plays videos in the basement and works at Gamestop. His favorite book is Reanimator, his favorite movie “Requiem for a Dream.”And although he is disheveled and unkempt, it does not escape your notice that Aunt Glady’s eyes light up every time she looks at him. She calls him “the most interesting, funny and intelligent boy that has ever lived,” and he rolls his eyes, admitting he wishes he could find a better job so he can move out of his house.
Thanksgiving holds its own, and is Aunt Glady’s sturdy dependable eldest child. The child that reminds Aunt Glady to take her blood pressure pills, always drives the speed limit, tells brother Funk that maybe if he wore something other than black he might find a date. Thanksgiving is comfortably ensconced in its position between Halloween and Christmas, content and reliable in its culinary delights.
Christmas is like your single rich Uncle Flash who drives a Mercedes. Everything about him reeks of luxury- you can smell his cologne before you see him, and his teeth are bleached so blindingly white they have their own Instagram account. Everyone wants to be near him, to know him, to soak in his magisterial energy force. He bips and bops, skips and pops, handing out hundred dollar bills and hypnotizing everyone with tales of his scuba diving in the Maldives, running with the bulls in Pamplona, hang-gliding off the Sphinx. You are entranced by him, and when he leaves, the world seems duller and less exciting, and you wait all year for the chance to see him again.
Aunt Glady doesn’t expect to compete with Uncle Flash, but she’s just happy to be invited to the party. Without Aunt Glady so many interesting things would be missing, and Funk wouldn’t come without her. And as Uncle Flash is regaling you with tales of cage-diving with great white sharks, you might find yourself rolling your eyes, wishing Aunt Glady was there.
And she will be nowhere to be found.
So after so many months of heat and humidity, crowds and traffic, let’s celebrate a season that is quieter, cooler and more confident in its abilities. Display those mums, corn stalks and pumpkins, and let us celebrate a season that simply asks to be invited to the party we call Life.