Deco report

I do a lot of walking around Galesburg, about two or three miles a night, but it's all pretty much on the same route so most of the deco I see is actually during the day, driving around. Still, I'm curious about it. Most of my observations below are actually hypotheses - I believe them but can't necessarily prove them; they're open for argument. Feel free to chime in if the blog lets you comment.

First, deco is a medium-size town thing - towns like Galesburg tend to go overboard, like Parsons, Kansas, but smaller towns have less of an audience, and larger towns have more to do, so their residents don't feel like taking the chance of putting something out there that could be stolen or used against them. Therefore Galesburg and towns its size tend to have more deco per capita.

Second, fall is overtaking Christmas in both length and amount. I saw the first fall deco in mid-August - that's two and a half months before Halloween and it's not even over at Halloween. There are more skeletons than Santas. There are two kinds of fall deco - the haybale/strawman/pumpkin healthy kind, then the death/black/vampire/blood/skeleton kind which is way more popular. In this secular age nobody seems to be into Jesus and the creche altough you do see some, but whoa there are plenty of skeletons and vampires out there. And there are a few that mix healthy fall haybales with ghosts and vampires, all in fun I'm sure.

Third, this year may be a bit milder than last year, so I'm not really sure if fall/death deco is still increasing exponentially. In these over-deco towns I'm already chagrined that the first pumpkins went on sale Sept. 1 - how can a live pumpkin keep from rotting for two months if someone has already carved it? But it's like Christmas trees - you have to buy in early just so you can celebrate all season and waiting until the last week, or maybe last two weeks, is stupid anyway so why should it even be possible? Those Sept. 1 pumpkins will be long gone by mid-October and anyone who wanted to carve just one for Halloween will be SOL as they say.

We live near Broad and Mary, Halloween capitol of Galesburg, where cars come from all around on the big night, park near that corner, and watch their kids walk up and down the street hitting up the castles. One put on a show for them. We buy four or five bags of candy and it's not nearly enough, and we no longer send teens out to greedily get some of it back and even up the score. My wife is about done with it - ready to turn off the lights and hide in the back - but she wants a fake tree too just to cut back on the fuss and maybe the work. In other words we've reached the age where we don't even look forward to the holidays, or at least she doesn't, and I do but readily admit I can't do the work I used to, the deco, the cards, the wrapping, the hauling of the tree, etc. Keeping up with the culture is a lot of work.

So, mid-September and my question is: is it going over the top again, as an annual tradition? Are the lights just now coming out, purple and orange - are they the new light colors for fall deco? Think we'll see any real bats? Out here, in the historic district, we might. They don't mind it the way it is, and they fly around a lot now, because it could be a long winter.