October 1st hits, and immediately they went up. All the decorations put up at home and in the office made it clear - October is Halloween. Halloween commercials on TV, spooky movies at the cinema, scary movie marathons on TV (31 days of scary movies is a theme on multiple channels), selecting and refining costumes, large merchandise displays at retailers, buying candy way too early (thus leading to replacement runs), haunted houses and other scary amusements operating every weekend of the month. Even trick or treating may or may not be on the 31st - every community and church seems to pick a different night. So some clever children may be double-dipping or even triple-dipping.
When did Halloween become a full month? It's no longer a day. It's a whole season. Part of that is over-commercialization, but I think part of it comes from people's natural instinct to think seasonally. We are not far from our agrarian roots, with the sharp rhythms of the agricultural calendar. We take comfort in the patterns of the year. I go to a church where the liturgical seasons are significant, including advent, lent, Christmas and Easter.
Christmas has grown too and has almost devoured Thanksgiving as a holiday. The day after Halloween, supposedly All Saint's Day, is now the opening bell to the Christmas season. Yes, some retailers set out Christmas displays before Halloween, but I don't think it really clicks into people's mind until November 1st.
Valentines's and Easter have also grown. The first half of February is dominated by events related to the holiday. And, of course, the candy is set out as early as the day after Christmas, so it's another one that I buy early and then have to resupply.
Another event that has grown into a season is voting. Thanks to early voting and absentee ballots, voting has already begun in some Georgia counties, and all other counties will be quickly following. What this means is that ads and canvassing and phone banking is sometimes directed at people who already voted. You can be trying to persuade or inform your neighbor, only to be told it's too late.
I usually wait for election day to vote. It's a tradition that I'm used to, and it helps make that day special. I sometimes worry that some breaking news event will affect the way I vote. Not this year, however. At least for me, there is no big mystery as to how I'll vote. The stakes are too high to do otherwise.
When I turned 18, I knew exactly what I wanted to do to celebrate. And it had nothing to do with drinking and carousing. I registered to vote. I believe in democracy. I believe in voting, and I was proud to begin exercising that right.
Not everyone feels that way, however. In spite of the lengthening of voting season, turnout really hasn't improved that much. It's incredible to me how many people throw that right away. All is not lost, though. I have been proud of the efforts of the Student Ambassadors, a high school group that centers on registering young people to vote and encouraging civic participation. The Student Ambassadors is a project of the Georgia Secretary of State, led by Secretary Brian Kemp, and I applaud him for leading those efforts,
Less applause-worthy are the voter suppression efforts Mr. Kemp and others have led. Reducing polling places in poorer areas, throwing hundreds of thousands off the rolls, blocking the voter registration of tens of thousands, the lion's share who are African-American voters. It's a cold-hearted effort to protect a fragile Republican majority, one that is threatened by changing demographics and an increasingly unpopular President.
I don't know if we could compel people to vote like they do in some countries. We may never be the leader in voter participation. We cherish independent decisions too much here to make voting mandatory. But we could make it a lot easier to register. There's no reason every citizen, upon turning 18 isn't automatically registered. We can do that if we had the will.
Voting season is a cool thing. Making election day a national holiday would be even cooler. Anything to encourage turnout would be a plus in my book.
My son, Benjamin, turns 18 in December. That's too late for the important election coming up. But I know this - whatever the obstacles, whatever the hoops are, come his birthday he will register to vote. Turning our young people into voters starts with parents who care, And with a society ready to welcome them to the voting season.
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