The cobwebs are still clinging to the porch lights, the motion sensor witch cackles every time the wind blows, and I’ve eaten my body weight in miniature Snickers. It’s the week after Halloween, otherwise known as The Great Crash. The sugar high has worn off, the pumpkins are collapsing into themselves, and yet, before the last fun-sized wrapper hits the floor,  the world expects me to pivot straight into gratitude mode.

Sidebar: The Thanksgiving Overachievers
You know who they are. The ones who start defrosting turkeys before the Halloween candy’s even gone. Their table is already set, the centerpiece involves real gourds, and they’ve “test-baked” their pies three times, purely for quality control, of course. Meanwhile, the rest of us are still peeling hot glue off our fingers from last week’s costume crisis. Calm down, Martha. It’s November 2, not the Macy’s Parade.

Welcome to November, where the transition from spooky to sentimental happens faster than a Target endcap swap. One minute it’s witches and werewolves; the next, it’s turkey centerpieces and cranberry-scented candles. Can we talk about this holiday whiplash? We spend six weeks building up to Halloween: costumes, candy, decor, haunted houses … Then we get roughly six hours of recovery before the “Thankful for my blessings” posts start rolling in.

Sidebar: The Inflatable Epidemic
And while we’re here, can we also address the inflatable epidemic? Every neighborhood has at least one lawn overrun by plastic chaos that looks like a yard sale hosted by a sugar-crazed toddler: Frankenstein lounging on a pumpkin, a ghost holding a “Boo Y’all” sign, and some 12-foot skeleton Santa hybrid that looks like a rejected parade float. They wheeze, they flap, they half-collapse into something that looks like a crime scene every morning, only to resurrect at sunset. I respect the commitment, but definitely not the aesthetic. There’s festive, and then there’s “Home Depot clearance aisle exploded on your lawn.” I get festive, but this is full-blown yard anarchy.

Somewhere between scraping fake blood off the driveway and Googling “creative side dishes that aren’t green bean casserole,” I can’t help but wonder: why can’t we spread the holidays out more evenly? There are twelve whole months in a year, yet we cram all the good stuff into three. By the time December rolls around, we’re exhausted, broke, and questioning our life choices as we hang twinkle lights over the same hooks that held cobwebs a week ago.

Imagine a world where Halloween got its own recovery period. I could use a whole week to detox from sugar, compost the pumpkins, and slowly transition from ghosts to gourds. Maybe Thanksgiving could take over February (we could use a gratitude check mid-winter), and Christmas could linger in March when we’re all desperate for a bit of magic. But no. Society insists on running a holiday marathon with no water breaks.

So, as I sweep up candy corn shrapnel and pack the cackling witch back into storage, I’ll raise my pumpkin-spice latte to all of us trying to stay festive without losing our sanity. The Halloween hangover is real, and the cure isn’t electrolytes; it’s time. Too bad time’s already running headfirst into the next holiday.

Sidebar: Pumpkin Spice Has Gone Too Far
Look, I love a cozy latte as much as the next person, but the pumpkin spice industrial complex has gotten out of hand. We’ve gone from coffee and candles to pumpkin spice deodorant, dog treats, and, heaven help us, pumpkin-spice-flavored hummus. I saw a chef on Instagram defile a pumpkin only to bastardize the tiramisu!!! It’s not pumpkin-spiced tiramisu, it’s a war crime against mascarpone. SINNER!! At this point, if it’s edible, wearable, or sniffable, someone’s found a way to dust it with nutmeg and call it seasonal. Somewhere, an actual pumpkin is quietly wondering how it became the brand ambassador for corporate fall. I have it on good word that the pumpkin says STOP! Immediately, STOP!

Maybe the problem is that we’ve turned every season into a spectacle. We can’t just enjoy fall; we have to brand it, bottle it, and bathe in it until we can’t tell the difference between cozy and chaos. Somewhere along the line, celebration turned into performance, and the rest of us are just trying to keep up without losing our minds (or our tiramisu). The holidays shouldn’t feel like a competitive sport, but here we are, sprinting from one themed caffeine fix to the next, pretending it’s all perfectly festive instead of mildly unhinged.