It’s festival time
Posted on Friday, October 3, 2008
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/Editorial/239104/
Serious doings are afoot in the world,
and I am not without concern for
my fellow man, but old habits are hard to break. Pumpkin pie, anyone ? Forgive the lapse, the temporary reshuffling of priorities, but it looks, feels and smells like autumn in Arkansas, which for my money is the best time of the year. Let the wordsmiths wax poetic about the world’s rebirth in springtime. Autumn has been my forward-looking season ever since that early-September morning when I was awakened by Mama’s sweet rendition of “School Days.” Oh, the anticipation that song evoked. New concepts quickly took hold after that day. Almost immediately, it became apparent that weeks were divided into work days and play days; that months had themes which set each one apart from the others; that a year wasn’t just a year but four wondrous things called seasons. Being associatively inclined, naturally I made the connection between the time of year and the first deviation from what had been my life’s pattern up to that point.
To this day, the first seasonal scent of morning dew or crisp air reminds me of the beginning of school, and since the beginning of school is forever fixed in my mind as the beginning of a new adventure, autumn never fails to refresh the weary mind and replenish the flagging spirit. You can have your summer vacations and your winter wonderlands and your springtime sniffles. I am firmly convinced that good things happen to those who wait for autumn.
Of course, the older I get, the more aware I am that autumn also means family in my emotional vernacular. My family didn’t do the vacation thing until I was almost grown, and except for my birthday, which was usually a low-key event, the best times we spent together were during the holiday season, which begins around Fall Festival time.
Back in the golden olden days, we called it Halloween Carnival time, and preparations began within a couple of weeks of school’s opening day.
Activities for those in the kiddie grades followed a predictable pattern. The first art project was the venerable autumn leaf, then the hallowed jack-olantern, and then a ho-hum Pilgrim or turkey before what most youngsters saw as the pièce de résistance of the holiday season, Santa Claus.
For all the jolly old elf’s allure, his coming still marks the end of autumn for me, so as much as I love both the pagan and religious rituals of Christmas, I hate to see his annual visit being heralded earlier and earlier. To everything there is a season, and autumn isn’t his.
Even now, the juices flow a bit faster when stores start dragging out the Halloween sweets, which, thankfully, most still postpone until mid-September. Considering that kids today have to go back to (school ) work during the dog days of August, when the promise of autumn excitement can’t begin to compete with the longing for just one hour at the local swimming hole, I’m glad the mavens of commerce are still able to show a little restraint.
I knew autumn had arrived the other morning when the dog and I went out for her morning constitutional. It was just another work day, but a work day nonetheless, so we both spent far too much time breathing in the sweet smells of the first phase of the seasonal change that had slipped in during the night. I think we both returned to the house with an extra bounce in our steps. No heat ! No humidity in the air ! And was that just a trace of dew on the ground ? It was all glorious, and right on schedule. The pumpkins and colorful gourds and rugged stalks of Indian corn have been right on schedule, too. At the local supermarket, displays piled high, deep and wide with Halloween treats have replaced the picnic and grilling supplies, and black and orange are back in fashion. Even the greeting card aisle has taken on fall colors as witches and jack-o-lanterns supplant hearts and flowers. The festival season has begun. Oh, sure, soon enough the candy corn will make way for the chocolate-covered Santas, but don’t let that rush you past enjoying the cooler evenings, the changing leaves and the myriad other wonders of an Arkansas autumn. They are all the more reason for the Thanksgiving dinner and the Christmas hymns to come.
—–––––•–––––—Associate editor Meredith Oakley is editor of the Voices page. An earlier version of this column ran Oct. 14, 2005.