October 18, 2022

Locke Nest Cabin

This is the first time I have ever written to you. Growing up, watching the cartoon, and feeling bad for poor young Linus and Lucy waiting for you to show up (which you didn’t) did not exactly put forth any confidence in me you would read anything I sent you.

This year, I’m sending this long overdue letter. I’m not writing this to get gifts rained down upon me in a pumpkin patch. Nor am I writing for an explanation as to why you kept leaving poor Linus hanging on to his devoted faith in you without showing up to his most sincere pumpkin patch.

(Then again, maybe THAT WAS YOUR POINT! Sometimes all there is to go on is faith and faith alone.)

So, I am not writing for presents. I’m not writing for a response back. I’m writing to thank you. Thank you for all the years I have been watching and waiting for you. Right there, alongside Linus, I watched. All year long, I waited for Halloween with an eagerness that matched Christmas. And I waited to watch that silly cartoon, with YOU as the main attraction no-show.

Also, this letter is for all the children that believe in that fantastical kindness and never-dying hope in the young of an entity of great goodwill. That is a quality too quickly dispatched in all of our lives.

Wouldn’t you say so, Great Pumpkin?

For Halloween, just this once, rise out of some little pumpkin patch in the heart of a child. Deliver the gifts only joy can bring. Halloween is more than a simple tradition of dressing up and causing harmless havoc. Halloween is one of those nights imagination is jump-started in people of all ages. It is also a night that can bring the memories – good memories – of childhood back. Through smells, through visuals, and through the passing-down of joys restricted to that magical night when witches fly through the sky, orange smiles glow in the night, and laughter is passed through masked and painted faces. The night of dancing skeletons and shrieks are jokes and joyous on a moonlit night.

Dear Great Pumpkin: thank you for all these years I have had with you. And I will pass the flaming jack-o’ lantern grin of fun and fantasy along to any child needing some good old fashion October fun.

Till next year, with affection,

Leland