Unlike the other Fall/Winter holidays, Halloween punctuates its month. For Thanksgiving, you have one or two days before the big feast, and then family and friends tend to hang around the day after as well, lounging about due to all the food in your gullet OR because you love to do crazy Black Friday shopping. But there’s a buffer on either side. For Christmas, the holiday drags out some. You have all this build-up, especially if you’re an advent calendar kind of person. It really counts down the days and you can see just how much time you have. Even after all the presents are opened and the wrapping paper and boxes have been shoved into a corner of the room, the tree still stands and the gifts accumulate here and there. There’s still pie left to eat and fruit from gifted baskets; the music still plays on the radio and there’s a lull between Christmas and New Years.

But Halloween… once your candy is collected and sifted through, picked over for the very best stuff then put into a bowl…once the kids go to bed after having run from house to house to house… then it’s over and it’s November and – if your city is anything like mine today – the sky is a misty gray and hello true Autumn.

I start to hunker down around this time; start brewing tea at night and bring out softer blankets to add to the couch. The desire to accomplish anything after, oh, 8 PM, becomes null and void. I want to sit in my heated home and just chill. And it all starts the day after Halloween.