Forced Festivity, Shared Rituals, and Talking Bluebirds

By Jenna Remley

 

    This year, at the beginning of October, I told myself, “I’m going to make myself feel seasonally-appropriate cheer for Halloween.” I tried to force it - I kept the LED lights in my room on purple or orange; I lit autumnally-scented candles; I watched spooky-themed shows in the evenings; I listened to Brian David Gilbert’s new Halloween album, the Night in the Woods soundtrack, and fall-themed Nintendo music compilations while I worked on my computer in my room each day.
    And yet, no matter how I tried, I didn’t really feel it. I knew from the beginning of the month that I would have no real Halloween festivities, because of my job and the pandemic and my lack of any plans with friends. My inability to truly embody seasonal cheer felt like the symptom of a larger problem. Maybe it’s just growing up, and maybe it isn’t helped by the pandemic, but I’ve been feeling lately like my life is lacking in rituals. So much of my life is a haphazard routine, always being bogged down by banal necessity, that it’s felt hard to summon any true excitement or feeling of sanctity for a holiday.
    Last year, my cousin and I got a Christmas tree, even though we’d never had one in our house in years past. In 2020 we felt that, since the pandemic was precluding so many other Christmas traditions, we needed to enforce a little cheer in our household. And I loved decorating the house, setting up Christmas cards in the window, and having the tree light up the living room with a cozy glow each night for over a month. But this October I didn’t get that same satisfaction. Despite my meager efforts, October felt less like the spooky month and more like the working-a-lot and being-overwhelmed-by-mundane-tasks month.

    Over the Garden Wall came out in November 2014, its ten-episode run airing over five evenings. By the third day it was being broadcast, I started seeing people post about it online - sharing screenshots of this cartoon starring two oddly-dressed boys and a bluebird, talking about ‘potatoes and molasses.’ My curiosity piqued, I found the episodes online, and then watched along as the last episodes aired. I immediately started gushing about it to my college roommate, struggling to articulate the old-timey charm and clever writing and mysterious setting, and how all these disparate things worked together to create such an excellent show.
    I don’t know that I’ve rewatched the show every single autumn since then, but I’m at least close to having seen it seven times through. I watched it this year with my mom and my brother, and I realized that I do really know this show inside and out. Every time there was a funny line, I started to smile the moment before it was spoken. For each important plot point, I knew exactly what dialogue to analyze, what expressions to pay attention to. I trained my eyes on the background of various scenes, trying to notice any easter eggs or clues or details I hadn’t before, but - I never saw anything unfamiliar.
    Even with my many viewings of Over the Garden Wall, and my dives into online forums about people’s theories (talk to me about the black turtles, friends!), there are still unanswered questions about the show’s plot. But the mystery is part of what makes it so magnificent. It doesn’t feel like there are plot holes - it feels like this is a fantastical story about a magical place, and it’s natural and okay for us to not know the exact reasons that every little thing happened. It feels like we just got a glimpse into a much bigger and more enigmatic world. We can imagine our own solutions or fill in the blanks, but it feels fitting that not everything is laid out for us. I love that there are things we’ll never know about the Unknown, things we can always speculate or theorize about.
    As enjoyable as the show still is, though, I do miss that feeling of wonder and surprise I got from watching it for the first time. When I first heard the line “We’re just gonna hang out and drink age-appropriate drinks...age-appropriate stuff that’s not illegal,” I laughed so hard I had to pause the video and immediately tell my roommate about it. The first time I saw the final episode, I cried during the climactic emotional scene - I truly didn’t know what would happen, if everyone would get out of the situation okay. The feeling of first seeing episode nine and having so many hints and clues over the arc of the show come together with sudden clarity was unparalleled. And I do miss the emotional intensity of that - now I can watch placidly, knowing the plot twists ahead of time, knowing how everything is going to end. As much as I do still love this masterpiece of a TV show, there was something a little underwhelming about watching it this time.

    Halloween is a Sunday night this year, and so I joined my family for our routine Sunday night dinner at my grandparents’ house. As we drove through their neighborhood at dusk, the streets were uncharacteristically busy, filled with kids of all ages in costumes adorable, horrifying, and obscure. I realized, watching little groups of trick-or-treaters walk down the sidewalks, that it’s been a long time since I’ve seen something like this. Even over the past few Halloweens, I haven’t witnessed the trick-or-treating ritual - this mass tradition, everyone doing something absurd like dressing up in costume, forming an inherently friendly and united community by all giving out candy to kids.
    And I felt the slightest spark of magic in my chest, a single un-forced moment of Halloween cheer. Even though I didn’t personally dress up, or go to a party with friends, or hand out any candy to children - I still felt a little bit of the spirit right then, and I’m grateful for that. After that, my night of eating popcorn and chocolate while watching Little Shop of Horrors on my own suddenly felt much more enjoyable and rewarding. Just that momentary reminder, that brief connection to the outside world - seeing that the feeling of celebration isn’t about the aesthetic, but about the people participating in it.
    Tomorrow it will be November first, and so I’ll transition from one seasonal aesthetic to another. Maybe I’ll break out the Christmas music, and maybe I’ll think about trying to decorate the house. But if I’ve learned anything from this month, what’s most important about these cultural holidays is that I share them with other people, somehow. My own private traditions may wear thin, but by connecting with others, maybe I can see them through new eyes. So instead of holing up in my room to do my work, hopefully over the next couple of months I’ll have the chance to venture out and create that feeling of community and festivity and magic, together.