Decorating Archives - Bob on Books

When I was growing up, this was how we decorated for Halloween. With mom and dad’s help, we got the knives out and tried to carve the scariest pumpkin we could imagine, after we had scraped out the insides–all those seeds you could roast in the oven and the flesh that was the stuff of pumpkin pies, or just went onto a newspaper to go into the garbage. Then you set a long-burning candle on the inside and tried to place it where it was both visible but not too easily grabbed and smashed by Halloween pranksters.

That was Halloween decorating for most of us. I think most of our parents were too busy with work or tired from it to spend time on elaborate decorating only to take it all down to put up Christmas decorations. The only elaborate Halloween displays I remember were those haunted houses where volunteers dressed up as ghosts, goblins, and witches to scare the bejeebers out of us (a great ploy to get our girlfriends to hug us!). Most of us just focused our creativity on our costumes–many of them homemade.

No longer. Walking in my neighborhood toward sunset last night, I was amazed at the elaborate displays some people had. Graveyard fences. Tombstones. Ghouls. Goblins. Skeletons–some appearing to come out of the ground. Ghosts and goblins in the trees. Cobwebs on the bushes (one house had two big eyeballs looking out from the bushes). Illuminated inflatables, some with arms waving around with the breeze. Orange lights strung over houses and trees.

Something happened between when I was a kid and my son was a kid. It was when he was old enough for us to take him out to trick or treat that we first noticed it. Really, at the time, when we lived in Maple Heights, near Cleveland, around 1990 or so, it was just one guy. But in the years since, it has spread–some houses just decorate modestly and others go all out.

Some speculate that it was all the horror films like “Halloween,” “Friday the 13th” and “A Nightmare on Elm Street.” What is clear is that it has become big business. A Retail Dive article from 2022 states that it has become a $10 billion business with all the big box stores devoting sections to selling decorations. We see empty storefronts turned into seasonal decoration stores and party stores and even garden centers have big sections for decorations.

What I wonder is whether the kids have any more fun than we did. After all, the big deal was the magical night where you could dress up as bums and pirates and ghosts and walk from house to house, knock on doors, demand treats, and people gave you candy. What could be more fun than that? At least, that’s how I remember it, growing up in working class Youngstown. How do you remember it?

To read other posts in the Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown series, just click “On Youngstown.” Enjoy!

In this past Sunday’s New York Times Magazine there was an article with the intriguing title of “On Their Death Bed, Physical Books Have Finally Become Sexy“. Beyond the weird juxtaposition of death beds and sexiness, I wanted to know what this was all about, so I guess the title at least worked as a good “hook”!

It turns out that what this is all about is the fashion trend of decorating with books, even if one doesn’t read them, or only reads electronic versions of them. The article notes how almost any interior design magazine or home journal shows lots of pictures of rooms with attractive and book-filled shelves. It also describes how some people will buy books simply for the color of the book spines–all in purple or green, for example. And so, whole businesses have developed providing books in bulk to those who want to look literate. I’ve seen these in furniture stores and most look like old book club editions minus dust jackets and probably salvaged from estate sales, or desperate children cleaning out a parent’s home.

I guess this keeps them out of landfills, at least for another generation, or until their owners tire of that “look”. Yet in a strange way, I also get it. We have a bookcase with Library of America titles we bought on subscription until the bookcase was filled. I think the only way I got away with this was that my wife liked the way the books looked in our living room. But I’ve always had many hours of enjoyment reading those books, whether it is tales by Mark Twain, or the speeches of Abraham Lincoln.

It seems that rooms lined with shelves have a special kind of coziness. They don’t just make their owners appear to be literate but, if not overly messy or threatening to tumble onto one’s guests, they lend a warmth to a room that might seem too stark with just a few pieces of furniture. And there is also the implicit invitation of, “come and read and explore the treasures within” that seems to be lacking when one looks at a Kindle or tablet lying on a coffee table.

The only problem I see with decorating with randomly acquired books one has no intent of reading is that you not only mislead your guests as to your literacy, but you send false messages about yourself. I love to look at the books on other people’s shelves to learn about what interests them. But if their books are selected only for appearance rather than content, that misleads me. Or maybe it doesn’t if I figure out that is what is going on. That also tells me something about the person, perhaps something not entirely complimentary.

Yet, my mother-in-law was always fond of saying, “where there is life there is hope.” I might just have to adapt that motto and say, “where there are books, there is hope!”