Happy Halloween!

?Halloween is back. After being effectively canceled last year, it is back for 2021.

You can see it in the yards. The decorations are back. The decorations are in more yards than ever before. And the decorations are more, um, interesting. There are all the store-bought displays: headstones, skeletons, ghosts hanging in trees, orange lights, even inflatables of various sizes.

The decorations also include more homemade displays: carved pumpkins (of course), and stuffed scarecrows. But now more imaginative displays – scenes of mock terror staged with figures and furniture and fake blood in the front yard and on the front porch. Homes with balconies on the front are prime places for dangling spiders, hanging ghouls and huge webs.

I’m used to seeing Christmas projectors displaying winter scenes on garage doors and the fronts of houses in previous years. Halloween projectors are news to me. And the projections are often augmented with sound and ‘smoke.’ Some folks are REALLY in to Halloween!

There are reports of bad taste displays – too gory or too political. But I haven’t seen any of those around here.

You can also see that Halloween is back in the stores. Candy is back big time. Businesses are betting on the return of trick or treating this year. Folks are buying the candy. I know I am.

The sale of yard decorations and costumes is clearly up. There is lots of stuff in the stores I frequent, and the supply changes regularly. So folks are buying a lot of stuff. And the pop-up Halloween superstores are back. Soon to be replaced by the pop-up Christmas tree stores. Ha!

You can feel that Halloween is back when talking to people who are looking forward to Halloween night and trick or treating. The fear that permeated last year is gone. Folks have figured out that living life normally makes sense. This is happy – and normal. At last.

I look forward to Halloween 2021 when then only masks I see are costumes masks on giddy trick or treaters!