Halloween Lights

A house nearly across the street from us has been decked out for Halloween by its owners. Not inflatable creatures or a quasi-gothic graveyard theme, but Halloween lights, which are still fairly rare in our area, despite what must be a determined effort by merchandisers to make them as common as Christmas lights.

One other neighbor has a short string of glowing electric jack o' lanterns in his yard, but that barely counts compared to the Halloween lights display across the street: orange lights along the roofline, others in the bushes, and hanging icicle-like lights that are orange instead of white or silver. Everything is orange, in fact, except a string around the door, which is green.

Something about Halloween lights doesn't quite sit right. Christmas lights are lighting up the darkness of early winter, and the electric versions are descendants of candles and oil lamps, though I suppose those couldn't have been put along rooflines without disaster. Halloween lights, on the other hand, are what? Orange lights could, maybe, have something to do with the harvest of pumpkins. But if you wanted that, you could display actual pumpkins. No, Halloween ought to embrace the darkness, rather than light a candle against it.

Besides, it's enough that I decorate for Christmas. Halloween too? Beyond pumpkins, that is, four of which we bought recently, one large enough to carve into a jack o' lantern, the others small enough for decoration. Ann took the smallest one and drew a face on it. Then she insisted on sleeping next to it.