Sam Hain is back again!

Man,that's corny...
The weather is already starting to change. I air is cool in the mornings and at night. It grows dark at 8:30. We've crossed the lip of September and are now moving toward the coming of night. In two weeks it will be Autumn and in 54 days it will be Halloween.
This is my favorite time of year. The very air is ripe with change. Transformation and metamorphosis are everywhere. The trees changing color, the night lengthening, the air growing cold, the smell of decay. We celebrate and express this change with Halloween, the one night you can be anyone or anything you like. The rest of the year we may have to be one thing or another, but this night, all bets are off! It's all about magic. Magic is change. Change is transformation and transformation is about loss and death. This is the time of decent, when the sun descends into darkness, when the leaves descend to the ground, when Persephone returns to the Underworld, and Demeter goes into mourning. In the Celtic tradition, I have come to understand it, the God of light, Lugh, is slain at the equinox and descends to the Underworld, leaving his rival, the God of Darkness, to rule the world. In the Underworld, Lugh takes the throne and is crowned on Samhain, which we call Halloween, and the creatures of the night rejoice on his coronation day.
We symbolically enact this cycle by descending into our own underworld, our own version of hell, to confront the demons there. We must acknowledge the demons in order to rule them, lest they revolt and destroy everything. We honor them and celebrate them and bless them for this one short span of time, so that we may better rule the light.
That's what I think anyway. That's why I never dress up like a fairy or an angel or anything cute, silly, or funny. I don't sit in judgment of that, it's just not what Halloween is about for me. I love the sinister, the macabre, the weirdness, the shock of it. Occasionally I laugh at it, and there's a camp element to it, for me. Something B Grade. If we don't laugh at our demons, then we are in big trouble, I think.
I fear with my busy schedule and the demands of both work and school that I won't have time for Halloween this year. Can you believe that? It's only the 8th of September and I'm already worried about my holiday plans. My brother pointed out to me last year that I am the only person he knows who worries as much about Halloween as most people do about Christmas.
He's right.
It will all be fine. It always is.
The real trick is how to properly celebrate Halloween. I think rituals have more meaning when shared by those close to me, by friends and family. Yet, a small gathering of friends hardly has the cathartic quality of a raucous nightclub or bar. However, going out to a nightclub can be so shallow and ultimately hollow. Not to mention that all the work of getting dressed up feels somewhat wasted if only four people see my costume.
*sigh* It's always a dilemma, every year. The obvious solution is to take my friends out the club with me, but that never seems to work out. I have some nice ideas for out of the ordinary activities this year. One involves a rather large bonfire. I'm sure I know someone outside the city limits where I can do that.
That'd probably be easy than getting everyone to participate in a black mass....