Holidays conjure up different feelings depending on your life, your age and so many other factors.
Take Halloween.
When we were growing up, it meant candy, costumes and Jack-o’-lanterns. My brothers and I were part of a big posse of kids including some who were in their early teens, so we were allowed to go beyond our block.
Walking home our bags were so full we’d need two arms to carry them. Mum let us have one piece of candy before bedtime. Of course, we’d hide a few pieces under the bed and eat them after lights out, which was bad for our teeth and could have been worse for our dogs. We didn’t know back then chocolate could kill them, so we were very lucky.
Now Halloween means gorgeous foliage, and the infernal racket of leaf blowers once those gorgeous leaves fall (why can’t they all fall at the same time?). Switching gears to planning for the holidays – what to do for Thanksgiving, making reservations for Christmas Eve lunch (my favorite recipe). Looking at the long list of things you were going to get done by the end of the year and telling yourself there’s still time.
Every year I try to find the perfect Halloween poem, and every year I’m drawn back to Edgar Allan Poe. This is one of my favorites because it reminds me of a house in the old neighborhood. It was the biggest house by far, set on a couple of wooded acres, and in need of repairs. A kind, elderly woman (probably my age now) lived there alone, and at Halloween she’d put on a witch’s hat and offer candy from black cauldrons.
Or so I was told.
I had been inside her house in the daytime with friends, when our parents would send us with casseroles. But I never got the nerve to walk up the long, dark driveway to her house on Halloween. I mean, you never knew, did you?
XO Brenda
The Haunted Palace, by Edgar Allan Poe
In the greenest of our valleys by good angels tenanted, once a fair and stately palace — radiant palace — reared its head. In the monarch thought’s dominion — It stood there! Never seraph spread a pinion over fabric half so fair!
Banners yellow, glorious, golden, on its roof did float and flow, (This — all this — was in the olden time long ago,) And every gentle air that dallied, in that sweet day, along the ramparts plumed and pallid, a winged odor went away.
Wanderers in that happy valley, through two luminous windows, saw spirits moving musically, to a lute’s well-tuned law, round about a throne where, sitting (Porphyrogene!) In state his glory well-befitting, the ruler of the realm was seen.
And all with pearl and ruby glowing was the fair palace door, through which came flowing, flowing, flowing, and sparkling evermore, a troop of echoes, whose sweet duty was but to sing, in voices of surpassing beauty, the wit and wisdom of their king.
But evil things, in robes of sorrow, assailed the monarch’s high estate. (Ah, let us mourn! — for never morrow shall dawn upon him desolate!) And round about his home the glory that blushed and bloomed, is but a dim-remembered story of the old time entombed.
And travellers, now, within that valley, through the red-litten windows see vast forms, that move fantastically to a discordant melody, while, like a ghastly rapid river, through the pale door a hideous throng rush out forever and laugh — but smile no more.