Ex Penna

So here is where it all begins--October 1st.  I, like so many other witches before (and beside) me, am getting my home, self, family, and magic prepared for the joyous season of Halloween.

Considering how incredibly busy the next 31 days will be, one would assume that I would dread its coming.  And yet, I can't wait.  I am smitten without shame for the entire Halloween season!

Because it all starts on October 1st here (and not a moment before!), I will give you the run-down of things I have planned for this month.

The Halloween Season at Quill's House:

1. Our decorations all come down from the loft first.  We get everything out and make sure it's still in good condition.  My husband and I talk about what we'd like to change this year, cool things we saw at the stores, where we'll trick-or-treat...basically spending this time getting really excited!
2. Clean everything!  All the regular cobwebs come down from the corners of the house and the fake ones go up.  We paper our entire living room with dungeon-wall hangings so a great deal of time here is spent in taking down and packing away everything "normal" on the walls.  Everything gets dusted before storage and where it was is scrubbed.  After all, I like to keep a tidy dungeon!
3. The dining room table is cleared of its usual stacks of books and half-finished projects and made pretty with candelabras, black candles, bottles of colored-water poisons and potions (that the local Johovah's Witnesses thought were real!), and a very dashing black and white curlicue tablecloth.
4. Outside, this is the time for final harvest from the fields and garden.  I preserve the tradition that anything which is left in the ground after All Hallows belongs to the dead (or the Pooka, depending upon your heritage).  So I start by harvesting everything from the garden that I can use, digging out the rest and turning the soil with some fertilizer.  As soon as I can, I also go to my favorite spots in the woods for late-year herbs.  I should be able to get a few more items for you all in the shop after this hunt!
5. Outside decorations are very specific.  One of our garden beds becomes a shallow grave surrounded by a barbed wire fence, the other a poison garden with my favorites marked by their folk names with black plant stakes, including Devil's Apple (Datura) and Deadly Nightshade (Belladonna).  Curtains of cobwebs, huge hairy spiders, vines of colored leaves, and a cauldron on a tripod in the middle of our yard...perfect!
6. Now's about the time to sit down to the big task--costumes.  This is where I take orders for the kiddos final vote (since their "what I wanna be this year" answer changes several times in the weeks leading up to October) and get a good idea of how I'll tackle the challenge of two fun, meaningful, well-constructed adult costumes you can dance in for my husband and I.  I take everyone's measurements and write them down on their own sheet.  Then I make a sketch of what they'll look like in the finished product, and one of it deconstructed into its formative pieces.  After that, I get out the newspaper and Sharpie and start measuring out the pieces and labeling them.  I cut everything and stack each costume's bits separately, awaiting the fabric that makes it real!
7. Shopping time!  I get to spend an hour or two cruising the fabric shop with my sketches, lists, and color combinations until I come up with just the right thing.  Or I just dig out the extra fabrics I have left from years past and see what I can salvage.  (Don't tell anybody, but the shirt to my lady Gnome costume from 2010 was a dyed bedsheet.  I think it might actually have once been my husband's Bacchus toga.  Shhh!)
8. Now comes the time to sew, sew, sew.  I have worked it out--I can do each costume, no matter how simple or complex, no matter the size or style, in 3 days.  That's my limit.  I can't seem to finish early, but I won't finish late.  How 'bout that?
9. Once the sewing is done, I fit everyone with their costume, adjust, and take lots of pictures to be sure I will still like it in a few days. (I'm neurotic like that)
10. Now it's time to plan the rest of our Big Trip.  Every two years, we go to Salem for the Witches Ball.  The drive alone is over 6 hours, so it takes a lot of work to be sure the timing, packing, and organization back home are all on cue.  Plus there's trick-or-treating to orchestrate (each town has it's night, so we could possibly go out 2 or 3 times) and school functions, too.  *Whew!*
11. Now for the organization of something a little more relaxing--food!  We like to have a feast on Halloween night with lots of theme foods that is still a functional dinner. With the kids eating candy until their teeth fall out, it's nice to get something good in them too.  What can I say--we're vegetarian.  So I like our veggie "walking tacos (a crushed snack-size bag of Doritos filled with Boca crumbles cooked with taco seasoning, plus lettuce, tomatoes, and cheese), a big bowl of guacamole piped with sour cream for a spider web and black olive spiders on top, and homemade "snake" stromboli stuffed with cheese and tons of vegetables, rolled, zig-zagged, and painted with food color stripes to look like a huge snake.  I like to try something new whenever I can and fill out the feast table enough to almost rival that of Yule!
12. After the feast comes the ritual.  Much to arrange and memorize.  Since our family began the tradition with our coven many, many years ago, we have not let the flame die on repeating this same rite.  We celebrate happily, recite poetry, sing, tell stories.  But then we reinforce the circle, fume with special incenses, and call up the dead.  I take the honor of being the go-between for any assembled spirits and use divination tools to speak for them.  We all give offerings to our beloved dead and retell stories of those we have lost.  It's always slightly painful, but it's the kind of bittersweet experience that I believe is helping our kids to grow up with sensitivity and respect for loss.  Like many others who follow Earth religions, I don't believe that this virtue is stressed enough today.

Needless to say, our kids don't go to school on the first of November.  That is part of our festivities and I couldn't imagine trying to rush all of the holiday into a neat time-frame that ends by 7:30 pm.  Our decorations come back down, with the solemnity of a funeral, about a week or so into November.  Then they are stored back in their solitary coffins in the loft until next year.

But, as always, it will be a season not to be forgotten and it's details will be retold for years to come.