September Is Still Summer, But It Is Also Halloween
I’m sorry.
Ok so one thing we all definitely know and agree on is that September is still summer. Let’s not dispute this. It’s the truth, and something I learned reading an ad for The New York Times from like seven months ago is that the truth is very important, which is a weird thing to say before hiring a climate change skeptic to write for your publication. Not what I would have done, but nobody asked me! If they had, I would have said two(ish) things:
- Do not hire a climate change skeptic as a person whose job it is to professionally express their opinions in The New York Times.
- September is still summer, but it is also Halloween.
- I know I said two(ish), but a third thing is that I am available to express my opinions in The New York Times if they feel like hiring someone who believes in the imminent threat of climate change and also has a lot of other great ideas to share (see above).
I know what you’re thinking: “I am not in a position to hire you as an opinion writer for The New York Times, but please tell me more about item two!” It would be my pleasure.
It’s easy enough to accept the first premise, that September is still summer. I know that because I asked you to do it earlier in this essay, and you wouldn’t let me down. But Halloween? How can that be? Let me refer you to Walt Whitman, referring to himself but also (probably?) a certain month: “Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.” If it is true of Walt Whitman (A FAMOUS POET) and of me, a person who works in a jewelry store but insists on calling herself “a writer,” then why not of the month of September?
But perhaps you don’t wonder if it is possible so much as why it is necessary. Here’s why: the best part of Halloween isn’t the actual day of Halloween (unless you are between the ages of four and eleven or nineteen and twenty-two, and yes, there’s a gap there, Halloween is a minefield for teens), but rather the Halloween season. And October is just one month, and too many other things are going on! Post-season baseball, people complaining on the internet about Starbucks seasonal beverages , people complaining about the people complaining about Starbucks seasonal beverages, friends and loved ones dreading winter even though it’s like two full months away and the worst part won’t even be until February or something. Where, amid all of this, is time enough to enjoy the seasonal bounty of decorating pumpkins and watching scary movies and eating candy corn and thinking that the wind rustling through the leaves is a ghost? WHERE?
What would be the harm in tacking on an extra month (September), even if it is technically a summer month (September)?? It’s not against the law!!!! Christmas is like eight months long these days, which I agree is too many, but it certainly sets an interesting precedent for how many months out of the year a person can feel entitled to listen to “The Monster Mash.”
It’s fine if you don’t want to do this or you think that it’s a bad idea, because sometimes it’s ok to be wrong (like how I think Magic Mike is the better of the two Magic Mike movies), but please, PLEASE don’t come crying to me on November 1st because you didn’t have time to watch both The Wicker Man (1973) and The Wicker Man (2006). I tried to help.
