Huzzah! The day has finally arrived. The day I've been waiting for all month long. It's the first day of Octoboween and I am so excited!
Seriously, not a lot of things excite me. But the first day of October does. It really, really does.
For most people, one day of Halloween is plenty. For some it's too much. But not for me.
I love the dark and scary stories. I love the rats and spiders. I love the macabre.
I grew up on scary movies, some much scarier than my children have yet to see. Edgar Allen Poe movies with Vincent Price. Stephen King. All the original scary movies of the '80s (Halloween, Nightmare On Elm Street, Friday the 13th) and then some. Plus lots of Hitchcock.
I don't go in for the hard stuff anymore. Nothing R. I just can't stand the gore. And I've found that a good scary movie doesn't need it. A really scary movie can freak you out without showing you anything. It lets your mind scare you. That's where the fear happens.
So a few years ago I decided I wanted more out of Halloween. Thus, Octoboween was born. Every day in October we watch a Halloween movie.
Halloween movie is a somewhat loose term. If it has ghosts or monsters, it qualifies. If it has Halloween in the title, it qualifies. If it's scary, it qualifies. So we end up with quite a broad range.
We will watch several M. Night Shyamalan movies (Signs, The Sixth Sense, The Village, Lady in the Water); probably a few Hitchcock movies (Rear Window, Rebecca); some more recent classics (Young Frankenstein, Labyrinth, Disney's Haunted Mansion, Ghostbusters, The Addams Family); definitely some Vincent Price (Fall of the House of Usher, Pit and the Pendulum); some original classics (Dracula and Frankenstein from the '30s); possibly Monsters, Inc. and Jaws; and we will end with Disney's Legend of Sleepy Hollow on Halloween.
It will be fun. It's a great family bonding time for us. Some days it will be just us; other times we'll have friends over.
It's the way we welcome fall. It fits our family. We revel in the ways we are weird -- together. And isn't that what family traditions are all about?