Halloween Traditions

Hey everyone! It’s my favorite time of year! Spooky Season! This week on the podcast we are talking about Halloween traditions and the things we like to do every year on Halloween. I am in a transitional place in my life, but I want to talk about some of the new traditions I have started over the past few years as well as some of the traditions that I have kept from my childhood.

Pumpkin Carvings by Jason and I

Halloween Decorations

Checking out the decorations at Michael's

I know a lot of people like to decorate for Halloween, and I am no exception. It excites me when the first Halloween decorations hit the shelf at the end of July/beginning of August. I typically like to hit up the décor sections early in the season and I like to hit them up again the day after Halloween. This, of course, was a tradition that I shared with my mom in the past. She always liked to prepare for the coming holidays early. I, however, keep my house decorated in a spooky aesthetic all year round. So, I keep two types of Halloween decorations: the ones I only pull out in October, such as fake cobwebs and spooky lights, and the ones I keep up all year, like my collection of gothic literature decorations.

31 Nights of Horror

Every October, like many horror fans, I TRY to achieve the near impossible (for someone with very little time), and that is to watch 31 horror or spooky movies in October. There really are no rules to this challenge other than you have to watch 31 horror (or, spooky if you don’t like horror) movies in October. Some bloggers even go so far as to create a daily theme for this challenge. Like this one from Horror Hound.

Every year, I fail miserably at this due to poor planning and not taking this challenge as seriously as other people do. I have only made it through ten movies this year. Aside from that, I like to go to the movies and watch at least one horror movie at the movies, and I have stuck to this tradition every year including in 2020 when most movie theaters were shut down and movies were going direct to streaming. This year, I saw Barbarian in the theater. The movie is about a woman, Tess, who books a remote home in Detroit to stay at while she attends a job interview only to find that it was double booked by an awkwardly creepy man named Keith. Tess ultimately decides to share the booking with Keith because the weather was horrible and there were no available hotels in the area.

Local Fall/Halloween Festivals

Pumpkin Nights with Jason

This is a new tradition that Jason and I started last year and continued this year during October. Last year, we went to Frights’n Lights in Frisco, which is a fall festival held every weekend in October that displays hundreds of horror icon lanterns and movie character carved pumpkins. The festival also boasts the largest trick-or-treat trail in Texas. This year, we decided to take a similar route and attend Pumpkin Nights in Arlington. Pumpkin Nights is a fall festival held every weekend in October that displays a trail of events and photo opportunities made almost completely out of pumpkin lanterns. The event also hosts a variety of activities such as shopping, a food truck park, and a playground for kids and adults.

Matching Pajamas

New PJs with Christen

This is also a new tradition that Christen and I mentioned on the podcast. Last year, I attended a slumber party that was thrown for Reyna at the beginning of October 2021 and I decided to stay the night to watch horror movies. Christen, the girls, and I went on a late-night run to Walmart for snacks and ended up in the pajama section. We bought matching nightshirts and wore them while we watched horror movies all night. We had so much fun shopping together, we decided we needed to do it again in the future. A couple of weeks ago, Reyna had her October slumber party and we ended up at Walmart in the pajama section again. We bought another set of matching nightshirts and ended the night watching horror movies, thus adding a new Halloween tradition.

Whether it is a new tradition or an old tradition, Halloween will always be my favorite holiday. I want to hear from our readers. Do you have any fun Halloween traditions? How long have you kept these traditions? Are there any new things you’d like to try this year? Please comment below.

A Dragon made of Pumpkins at Pumpkin Nights