My Eyes! My Eyes!

E and I made a trip to Target this morning to pick up a birthday gift for a friend of hers. E will be going to her party later in the day at ABQ Jump, and is rather excited about it.

While comfortably ensconced in the welcoming atmosphere of my second favorite store (anyone want to make a guess what my #1 favorite store is?), E and I decided to wander the aisles and do a little perusing. First off came the make-up section, followed quickly by the kitchen supply area. This took quite a while, since my kitchen is my favorite room in the house and I am a sucker for more stuff for it. (I picked up two large square-ish red melamine bowls to add to the red theme in my kitchen, woohoo! Love Target!) After that came a stroll through clothing, baby, sporting goods, and finally the Halloween section.

Ah, Halloween. That Pagan holiday that has become the second most-decorated holiday after Christmas, of course (anyone find that ironic?). Target has an entire corner of the store dedicated to Halloween. Skulls and pumpkins mingle with headless statues and severed hands in gory bliss, tempting people to turn their homes into mini haunted mansions for the next month. I like Halloween as much as the next person, but I am a bit turned off by the sheer repulsiveness of many of the decorations. Cute pumpkins: good. Oozing masks and screaming toys: bad. Packages of candy wrapped in shades of orange, black, and purple: good. Food shaped like severed fingers and bloody eyeballs: really bad.

My perplexity and yes, nausea at the scope of decorations available was not what inspired this blog entry. It was what lay behind the grinning masks of death and spooky trees that had my eyes burning in shock and pain. There, on the back wall of Target was a sizable collection of Christmas decorations. Yes, Christmas decorations, in September. Technically speaking, it is still Summer and yet people can buy Christmas lights and yard ornaments. There I stood surrounded by orange and black and doom and gloom, and up on the wall presiding over the madness and mayhem was a collection of jolly Santas and smiling snowmen. Seen from my perspective, they no longer seemed filled with holiday cheer but more of a maniacal glee at the scene below.

I may never look at Christmas yard statues without seeing witches and bats and blood again.