Put away the pool noodle. It’s Halloween.

I remember when Halloween was in October.

Apparently this makes me very old.

Now it seems Halloween begins before you’ve even shaken the sand out of your beach towel.  You’re still searching for sunscreen and a replacement pool noodle at the drugstore when you turn the corner and you’re confronted with a ten foot skeleton and a motion activated corpse hissing at you. 

It is September. 

It’s 103 degrees outside.  No one should be thinking about death but the person who decided to walk barefoot through the parking lot.

And yet we’re confronted by all manner of ghosts, goblins, witches, and ghouls.  Slowly, everything starts tasting like pumpkin. Stores start selling 175 mini bars of assorted chocolates that are supposed to be for trick-or-treaters but are guaranteed not to make it to October 31st.

Quickly, Halloween conquers summer.

Halloween used to know its place.  When I was growing up, you didn’t start thinking about Halloween until sometime after October 1st.  You found a pumpkin, bought some candy, and started figuring out your costume.  If necessary, your mother cut two holes in an old sheet and you were a ghost.

That was Halloween.

Today, Halloween requires a strategic plan.

People don’t decorate their houses anymore.  They create immersive experiences.

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Entire suburban lawns are transformed into cemeteries with skeletons crawling out of graves, ghosts hanging from trees, and enormous inflatable creatures hovering over the roof.  Some of these homes look less like they were decorated for Halloween and more like the occupants have opened a seasonal branch of Universal Studios.

I’ve often thought that Halloween is that holiday that encapsulates the life cycle of moms. When the kids are little, it’s all about them.  What do they “want to be” for Halloween?  There are costumes to buy or create, school parties, and the expected meltdown when your child discovers he’s not the only Spiderman.

Then your child grows up.  Nobody needs a costume and you’re standing in the middle of Homegoods in the middle of September debating whether or not to purchase the $79 ceramic ghost for your Halloween decor and it suddenly dawns on you that you’re the child now.

Slowly, you accumulate more and more.  One adorable pumpkin to sit by the front door turns into a pumpkin patch.  Eventually, you own so much Halloween decor that it requires a plastic bin marked “Spooky Supplies” to keep in the garage. Eventually you accumulate even more so that you own multiple bins with absolutely no clue what’s in them.

By the time Halloween rolls around you realize that you’ve lost track of all the candy you’ve purchased for the big day.  You end up with enough bags to feed an entire elementary school and that’s after you’ve consumed one entire bag yourself through constant nibbling.

By October 30th, all the stores are done with Halloween.  That’s when you notice the Christmas trees, decorations, lights, and cards popping up everywhere.

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You notice a woman in shorts standing beneath a sign reading “Home for the Holidays”  while outside it’s still warm enough to fry an egg on the hood of her car.

At this rate, our holidays are going to collapse one into another. Eventually, we’ll just throw up our hands and decorate the house once (a few people I’ve noticed seem to already be doing that).

Maybe it doesn’t matter when one holiday ends and another one begins.  The older I get the more I realize that holidays have a way of arriving faster than we expect and disappearing before we’re ready.

So maybe the stores have it right.  Celebrate early and often.

Just don’t ask me to buy a Christmas tree in September because I still have some Halloween candy to finish from last year.