One Thing or Another: The Joys of Being a (Almost) Halloween Baby

By Mark McNease

It’s always One Thing or Another … a lighthearted look at aging, life, and the absurdities of it all.

I’m reprinting this column as an annual tradition. The pandemic changed things dramatically last year, but Halloween is back. Nothing can keep a good witch down!

October has always been my favorite month. It’s the month when autumn really makes its presence felt, especially if you live where the seasons are discernible. (It recently went from air conditioner weather at the tail end of a relentlessly hot summer, to a sudden and unexpected freeze with a 30-degree drop). It’s flu season, which is always good for a sick day or two spent lying on the couch taking over-the-counter cold remedies that do nothing to stop you from feeling like death is close by. Honey, is the healthcare directive in place? You’re sure you’ve still got your copy? And how about the will? Can I change it by tomorrow? My sister forgot my birthday, I’m not sure she deserves the belt buckles.

But the two things about October that have truly made it special since I first shook a tiny fist at the world and dared it to stand in my way, are that I was born near the end of the month, and my birthday is close enough to Halloween to say I’m one of those babies … the ghoul and goblin children who claim this most sacred of Holy Days as our own. We don’t have to share it with a saint, a savior or a deity. No one’s expected to behave especially well, so long as they don’t vandalize property or steal candy from children younger than three. And over the last few decades it’s become an adult holiday dedicated to the troubled child in all of us.

While Halloween was once a day for kids to dress up in gender-conforming costumes and shuffle house to house extorting candy made of corn syrup and orange dye #12, it slowly became a day (or, more appropriately, a night) when adults could loosen our straightjackets of responsibility and become Frankenstein or Glenda the Good Witch or some politician in the news for passing out in an airport bathroom stall. To hell with the little ones, we said. This is our time to party with impunity, to contort and contest and act out, all with the explanation that it’s Halloween. You understand. It’s the best excuse outside Christmas for heavy drinking and bad behavior no one’s going to blame you for!

But more than Halloween itself, with its macabre festivity, I like being a Halloween baby because all these things converge in late October. It’s just before the holiday onslaught that now runs from November 1 through the birth of Jesus. It’s a welcome farewell to the heat, humidity and smells of an urban summer. It’s not quite late enough in the year to be depressed that another twelve months have flown by. Old Man Winter is still middle-aged and too busy coloring his hair to bother you with sub-zero temperatures. And, for us Halloween babies, it’s our birthday! Give or take a few days.

I’m happy to be a (almost) Halloween baby. Greetings to October, to Halloween, to my birthday, and to letting loose the kids in all of us too stubborn to grow out of it.

Mark McNease is the author of ten novels, two short story collections and miscellaneous fiction. He was the co-creator of the Emmy and Telly winning children’s program Into the Outdoors, and he currently hosts the One Thing or Another Podcast, as well as The Twist Podcast with his co-host Rick Rose.