Fall Foliage, Fright Night, and the Future Fears
October is beautiful, colorful, and scary.
Just when you finally craft the perfect pumpkin latte, you then need to move on to concocting a costume representing something either horrific or hilarious. By comparison with its 4th quarter friends, the anchor of September is Labor Day, marking the end of Summer, November gets to host Thanksgiving, and December gets to celebrate Christmas, while October “gets a rock,” as Charlie Brown says. Thankfully, Halloween has evolved into mostly a time for children to dress up and be silly, but there are still some adults who commit to the event and take the silliness very, very seriously.
Historically, the word "Halloween" originates from "All Hallows' Eve," the night before All Saints' Day, a day established by the church to honor saints on November 1, and the evening of October 31 became known as All Hallows' Eve. European immigrants then brought their Halloween customs to the U.S., and in the mid-twentieth century all these customs were merged, shifting a mostly religious observance to a community holiday centered on costumes, candy, cobwebs, spooks, princesses, cowboys, and witches—lots of witches.
There is no consensus on age limits for trick or treating, and to each their own, but greeting a 3-year-old fairy princess at your door holding a plastic pumpkin candy bucket is a very different experience than receiving a young adult on your stoop with little costuming and a pillowcase for their booty. It sometimes seems little more like amateur racketeering than trick or treating. Similarly, there are doorbells that conjure an adult ghoul or goblin in full makeup and regalia—it’s all in the spirit of fun and community, but it can get a little creepy.
But October is so much more than just Halloween, 30 days more. Fall has fully arrived in its full Autumn palette, while the days here in Maryland may be the best year-round—perfect temperatures, cool nights and evenings, and warm sunny days. It’s a great month for getting outside, getting the final rounds out of your golf clubs before the long slumber, filling your travel mug with a spiced coffee, selecting your cutest sweater outfits and hiking boots, and strolling into the park with your bestie and getting out of the neighborhood, dodging inflatable spiders and massive front lawn cobwebs.
For the most part, fortunately, silly overwhelms scary on Halloween. Sure, when mummies jump out of the neighbor’s hedge you can get momentarily stunned, but that thing jumping out of the hedge doesn’t need to be a mummy—at a certain age anything jumping out of anything is stunning. But that’s not really scary. What is truly frightening is coming to the realization that the young princess you are escorting from house to house may be forced to take care of you one day if you haven’t saved enough money for a healthy and secure retirement. That can be terrifying.
It's never too soon or too late to begin saving. MarylandSaves is a state-sponsored program that makes it less scary to put money away because it features an emergency fund that allows savers to access up to $1,000 when an unexpected expense “jumps out of the hedge.” So, by all means, save growing up for another day, but start saving money for tomorrow today.
Learn more at MarylandSaves.com, enjoy the season and prepare for all the seasons to come.