People opposed to crass commercialism always complain about the combined Halloween-Thanksgiving-Christmas triumvirate of holidays that end every year. “Can’t we at least dig all the candy corn out of our teeth before the Butterball turkeys appear in the supermarket freezer section?” they ask. Or they say, “Can’t we at least finish all the Thanksgiving leftovers before Lexus ties big red bows on its luxury vehicles and declares it’s “a season to remember?”
The answer to those questions is a resounding no. Ebenezer Scrooge was perhaps the first to experience a combined Christmas and Halloween holiday when all those ghosts showed up and warned him to mend his ways and enjoy life. Furthermore, childhood is wasted on any youngster who isn’t in a festive, dreamy mood from about mid-October until Christmas morning. Shame on anyone who isn’t in a perpetual state of celebration during the last three months of the year.
Speaking of Scrooge and ghosts, the truth is that any holiday is appropriate for a good ghost story. One of my favorite childhood traditions was to read Kathryn Tucker Windham’s Thirteen Alabama Ghosts and Jeffrey on Thanksgiving eve and scare myself so badly that I hardly slept. The only thing that kept me from an all-night vigil of checking under the bed and in the closets for a glimpse of the dearly departed was my mother’s tendency to stay up late making carrot cakes, pecan pies, and sweet potato casserole (the good kind, with mini marshmallows melted on top and lots of pecans and brown sugar mixed in, to completely camouflage the yucky sweet potato taste). The sound of her puttering around in the kitchen and the delightful aroma of the food finally lulled me into a pleasantly fitful slumber.
Alabama author Kathryn Tucker Windham wrote a series of southern ghost story books in the 1960s and 1970s. They were so popular at Blountsville Elementary School that it was nearly impossible to check them out of the library on Halloween. I always had to wait until Thanksgiving to get my hands on Thirteen Alabama Ghosts and Jeffrey. But that was fine by me. Ghosts were welcome to visit anytime, as far as I was concerned. One Christmas holiday, my cousins and I tried to reach Helen Keller through a séance. We were certainly ambitious children, trying to communicate with someone who was both deaf and mute (not to mention, dead).
One year, Mrs. Ann Lewis, the elementary school librarian, set aside Windham’s entire collection for me to take home during the Thanksgiving break. I think she bent the rules so I could check out all the 13 Ghosts series of books. I read all of them that Thanksgiving weekend. Mrs. Lewis was a true steel magnolia. She was gracious and kind, but she was not a woman to be trifled with. The rambunctious boys in our school knew not to give her any grief. I’m sure Mrs. Lewis was responsible for inviting Mrs. Windham to tell ghost stories at our school one year. I still have the author’s autograph tucked away in my belongings.
Right before Halloween this year, I was back at the elementary school for the high school’s annual alumni dinner. The event was held in the cafeteria, but I wandered off by myself and walked down the dimly-lit halls. Like some ghost from the past, I touched the children’s jack-o-lantern artwork taped to the walls and lingered briefly to reflect on my time there. I could identify my homeroom classes from grades one through six, but forty years have stolen away a lot of the details. I tried to remember where the library was, but I only had a vague recollection of its location. I halfway hoped the ghost of Kathryn Tucker Windham would appear and point me in the right direction.
May the ghosts of happy Thanksgivings past sustain all of you until the new year.
