I am a Halloween scrooge. I just don’t get why adults dress up at work (parties and  Comic Con notwithstanding, ahem), I think gore and horror is a weird thing to celebrate, and I don’t like to be scared. I had a moment of my grinch-y heart melting a little with the arrival of the nephew, but the work celebrations have been coming on strong this week and I was really feeling jaded.

Then my inner hippie came to the rescue and remembered that Halloween has its roots in the Gaelic festival of Samhain (prounounced “sah-win” or “sow-in”). And I can get behind Druidic cross-quarter days! So I’ll try to see the gore and spooky paper bats at work as just the last vestiges of a harvest festival that involved slaughtering a farm’s animals for the winter, and the death of plants for the winter. I may even try celebrating it myself–once I get home, of course.