{"id":782,"date":"2016-11-02T22:05:49","date_gmt":"2016-11-03T03:05:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateoftheozarks.net\/showcase\/?p=782"},"modified":"2019-02-16T14:33:55","modified_gmt":"2019-02-16T20:33:55","slug":"a-magical-halloween","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateoftheozarks.net\/showcase\/2016\/11\/02\/a-magical-halloween\/","title":{"rendered":"A Magical Halloween"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\">Been thinkin&#8217; about&#8230;<br \/>\n<em>\u00a0A Magical Halloween<\/em><\/h1>\n<p class=\"\" style=\"text-align: center;\"><em><span class=\"\">Halloween is my favorite holiday of the year.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"\"><span class=\"\">For me, Halloween was a week of spookiness complete with a trip to the dime store for candy and picking out a mask, then home to scare my big sisters (who were often obliging enough to pretend to be frightened).<br class=\"\" \/><br class=\"\" \/>After sunset we would eat taffy apples and pumpkin pie and rice crispy candy and homemade fudge and big bowls of chili, watch the Disney version of\u00a0<em class=\"\">Legend of Sleepy Hollow<\/em>\u00a0\u2014 you know, the one with Bing Crosby as narrator? \u2014 and carve a pumpkin.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span class=\"\">We would place the pumpkin on the old elm stump in the backyard, add a candle and hurry back inside. After turning out every light in the house, we\u2019d stand at the dining room window \u2014 me on a chair so I\u2019d be tall enough to see \u2014 and admire the ghostly orange candle-lit face floating in the darkness. Then we\u2019d turn all the lights back on, pull the heavy red drapes closed, and I\u2019d get somebody to read a Casper comic book to me.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span class=\"\">My birthday is only a week later so before the sugar high fully wore off, it was time for cake.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span class=\"\">Halloween was my moment to touch a mysterious world that was yet strangely familiar. Surrounded by family and food and light, I was safe. And yet, there was a delicious chill, that moment of unknown. Strange comfort in knowing things beyond the five senses might be lurking. I was somehow the richer for the knowledge.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span class=\"\">We live in a world clinical and gray, drained of magic. But when the fall wind rustles the scarlet leaves, when a fox\u2019s scream leaves us breathless, when a cold rain drips over the rocks (and transforms the moss to a magical green), when the swirling mountain fog obscures the ghostly laughing face of a jack o\u2019lantern, there is \u2014 once more \u2014 a world of color and rich and lavish emotion.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span class=\"\">The old Celts believed Halloween was the\u00a0night the curtain thinned between this old world and the next and opened upon an otherworld filled with a thousand shades of night and a deep and strange enchantment.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span class=\"\">Perhaps they were right.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Been thinkin&#8217; about&#8230; \u00a0A Magical Halloween Halloween is my favorite holiday of the year. For me, Halloween was a week of spookiness complete with a trip to the dime store for candy and picking out a mask, then home to scare my big sisters (who were often obliging enough to pretend to be frightened).After sunset&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":784,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[938,937],"tags":[91,92,94,89,93,90],"class_list":["post-782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ozarkeditorial","category-ozarkwriters","tag-bing-crosby","tag-celts","tag-dime-store","tag-halloween","tag-jack-olantern","tag-legend-of-sleepy-hollow","category-938","category-937","description-off"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateoftheozarks.net\/showcase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/782","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateoftheozarks.net\/showcase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateoftheozarks.net\/showcase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateoftheozarks.net\/showcase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateoftheozarks.net\/showcase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=782"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/stateoftheozarks.net\/showcase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/782\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":787,"href":"https:\/\/stateoftheozarks.net\/showcase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/782\/revisions\/787"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateoftheozarks.net\/showcase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/784"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateoftheozarks.net\/showcase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateoftheozarks.net\/showcase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateoftheozarks.net\/showcase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}