Halloween Is a Night Like No Other

I love Halloween.

I know how strange that must sound coming from a man who's made his livelihood off selling Christmas music, but it's the truth. I love all holidays to be honest... Valentine's Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, did I mention Valentine's Day?

So what is it about Halloween? Well, I approach it differently than most people, granted anybody who knows me knows I approach a lot of things differently than most people. The truth is I like a challenge. I like being put into a "box" and seeing how fast I can get out of it.

Here's a fact for you... in recent years (and these numbers may be slightly different now), home décor sales of Halloween products were expected to reach almost $7 billion and that has been the fastest growing category in the world of seasonal celebrations.

In sales, All Hallow's Eve is second only to Christmas. It's also second only to New Year's Eve in terms of numbers of parties thrown. Many analysts attribute this to baby boomers trying to recapture the nostalgia of their youth.

Personally, nostalgia's been good to me. I'm blessed to have a great career where I get paid to spread holiday spirit. I just can't believe it took me 25 years to figure out there were other holidays than Christmas. Halloween though is one of the most fun!

So many classic songs/themes can be updated and tweaked to give off a new futuristic vibe. I love being able to "de-range" these tracks into different styles. I've taken Bach's familiar music and "Mannheimed" it up to conjure memories of the classic Lon Chaney, black and white silent movie mainstays as well taking the well-known "Flying Dutchman" theme and making it into Richard Wagner meets "Conan The Barbarian."

For me these tracks create images of crisp fall nights, full moons and of course the change of seasons -- heralding the upcoming Christmas season. They also remind me of a time where as little kids we were able to go out into the neighborhood and trick or treat without being "guarded" by our parents.

I miss that Leave It To Beaver type era, but now as a parent myself I understand the need, which is part of the reason I've always held big Halloween parties on my farm. If I can give my kids and any others that sense of wonder and excitement then to me its just as thrilling as being on stage.

I wish you all a Happy Halloween.

 

 

 

Comments

[maggie3]

02:55 PM on 10/25/2012

I love Halloween,Christmas ,4th of July etc., all holidays.Each one offers us the opportunity to celebrate and have some fun with family and friends . What is not to like? We all need a break from work,politics and everyday chores. I always have to laugh at sourpusses that want to get rid of a holiday for their own personal beliefs or lack thereof. What fun they are missing and obviously would like to make us all miss them. Count me out !

[peacekitten]

01:59 PM on 10/25/2012

halloween is without doubt my favorite holiday.

[charleyvldm9]

09:21 AM on 10/25/2012

Hey! I wonder,is it only in America that the 'Devil's Holiday' is celebrated portraying ghouls,ghosts, graves and anything Satanic?

[boonedoggle]

03:44 PM on 10/25/2012

don't be silly!

[millebocca]

09:00 AM on 10/25/2012

what's not to like or love about these holidays - what's important is to do it in the right spirit, aware of the origins of all of our traditions (every last one of them founded by our pagan forefathers) and as light-hearted theme for celebration, rather than any holy cause for reverence. this goes for every last holiday we celebrate, the biggies - xmas, halloween (yes, included as religious holiday - see all saints day) and easter being fully materialistically manifested events loosely based on assigned calendar days of convenience, not historic validity.
charles dickens took this very approach with his holiday series, most famous which is A Christmas Carol - a beautiful story of humanistic evolution, set within a festive backdrop that basically single-handedly revived xmas celebration

[Taylor95]

07:44 AM on 10/25/2012

I love Halloween, it is by far my favorite holiday. A chance to enjoy the "dark side" and watch my favorite older and good horror movies (Omen, Exorcist, Halloween, etc). There is a Wizard of Oz massacre in front of my house and a giant inflatable zombie hearse on the side. It's wicked fun...!

[NevadaLiberal]

01:21 AM on 10/25/2012

Halloween is my favorite holiday by far. For a kid, it's a sense of wonderment, magical, excitement, adventure, wild imagination. No other holiday compares. We do it up right and really give the kids a spectacle and treat. I think in these down times it is even more important to make it even more special for kids. So go put up a few decorations, you've still got time, go get some candy and make at least one night out of the year a time and place for kids wildest dreams to take flight.

[maddiemom]

12:37 AM on 10/25/2012

If you remember the Leave it to Beaver days, you realize how lame Halloween has become since, I guess, around the mid sixties. A Mad Men episode showed the Draper kids being accompanied by parents to Trick or Treat. Very wrong for the era (I was an pre-teen at the time). They should have been running around playing tricks in the neighborhood early on (in groups of course),then later in costume to beg treats. My parents' generation were kids before the 1950s, and prior to that, were actual vandals at Halloween by today's standards. Soaping windows was vandalism in the fifties. It was the rare time of year (fifties and sixties in my case) where kids were allowed to run a bit wild. My daughter is in her thirties and will never know the Halloweens her parents and grandparents enjoyed. One of the few backtracks in "Kid History."

[cordierite]

01:01 AM on 11/06/2012

As a child of the 80s in the Northeast, I remember the Halloween vandals tradition of throwing eggs and shaving cream. It was usually by teenagers doing it to other fellow teenagers engaged in the tradition and not (in most cases) too strangers. I remember as a very young child trick or treating with my sibling and my parent walking under the train station one Halloween night and some kid threw an egg at my head from the platform. The egg was nearly an inch away from my eye and any closer and I would have winded up in the hospital. I remember crying in pain when the egg hit me and saw from above kids laughing away. Glad (as far as I know) those days are over. Now if someone does it today you can call the cops and report an assault...

[Relentless rik]

11:18 PM on 10/24/2012

Samhain!

[Amie Nogrady]

03:32 AM on 10/25/2012

Merry meet!

[OCerInTN]

05:53 AM on 10/25/2012

May the queen of Demons cast her gaze elsewhere.

[Rogo99]

10:22 PM on 10/24/2012

Manheim Steamroller :: Classical Music
Thomas Kinkaid :: Fine Art

[millebocca]

09:05 AM on 10/25/2012

the moolah is commensurate with the commercialism they both represent (and as here, the holidays they tap into)
and that is at least consistent w the rest this consumerist nation's preferences (think britney, think mcd's, think walmart, etc etc) and predilections (aka confusing religion w shopping, trimmings and trappings)

[noaxe397]

10:16 PM on 10/24/2012

Here in Phoenix I like Halloween because it means we are finally done with 100 degree days.


What I don't like about Halloween is that it has supplanted Thanksgiving as the start of the Christmas shopping season.


And soon Labor Day will be the start of the Christmas shopping season.

I was watching a baseball playoff game on October 18th and Target ran a Christmas commercial.

[Poovoh]

09:47 PM on 10/24/2012

Halloween rocks

[Pilatunes]

08:07 PM on 10/24/2012

Glad to find someone else in my camp. I love Hallowe'en, and every year I carve at least one, and sometimes as many as three, elaborate pumpkins. I don't mind being a grown-up, but I have to confess I wished I at least 30 or under so I could go to a Hallowe'en party and not feel out of place.

[Amie Nogrady]

03:34 AM on 10/25/2012

Poodle poop! I dress up every year - I also Trick or Treat. You are NEVER too old- if you feel out of place, change the mood of the place! (Have fun!)

[Thinking 4 Myself]

06:54 PM on 10/24/2012

Nothing can take the place of the Monster Mash

[SocialPrincess1]

04:18 PM on 10/24/2012

I just love Halloween! It's a fun way to express yourself or show off your favorite things. This year I'm going to go dressed as my favorite song, red solo cup!

http://www.squidoo.com/red-solo-cup-costume

[TheFabOne]

03:24 PM on 10/24/2012

Hey man, love your work! Especially the Day Parts CDs and the Sunday Morning Coffee one.