Halloween Greetings
Let the puns begin.
Halloween was confusing.
All my life my parents said,
“Never take candy from strangers.”
And then they dressed me up
and said, “Go beg for it.”
—Rita Rudner
When I was wee, our church—its members chronically fond of parties and food, then and now—made quite the fuss about Halloween. The old Victorian house in which we worshipped was ripe for ghostly goings on, and we did it all: elaborate decorations outside and in, apples bobbed and carmelized, kid activities in the classrooms, costumes, and one very scary mummy walking around among us. The latter so horrified me that I ran halfway home in terror. How was I to know that that gruesome beast was one of the church adults most beloved by the children? He had to unwrap himself to persuade me to come back.
Later in the evening, after the sun had long since given up the ghost (sorry) for the day, we kids gathered around the attic’s gigantic fireplace, its flames providing the room’s only light. (The adults were probably half soused by now, washing dishes or pontificating or, some of them, upstairs with us.) My father sat facing us in front of the fireplace and narrated that classic story, “The Golden Arm.” That tale, I learned only in researching this issue, dates back 200 years and was popularized by Mark Twain, who used it as a tool to teach people how to tell a good story. And tell a good story Daddy did. The first time I heard it, I was so terrified I buried my face in the lap of my friend Laurie. (Caleb Jones admirably narrates the tale on this scratchy 1973 vinyl recording.)
In short, Halloween did for me what it (and its equivalent in cultures around the world) is there to do: scare you senseless in a safe, communal environment so that you can better survive the world’s real-life horrors.
I have never, then or now, sent a Halloween card, but I’ve discovered—again because of this newsletter—that they’re a thing. Hooray! Any excuse to exchange a few words with our fellow human beings that don’t involve conflict or pain is always a good one in my book. Times change, we don’t bob for apples or give away unwrapped sweets or send our children out alone in the night anymore...but we can send cards to people we interact with. Especially kids.
And when our own life experience (i.e., mine) has no insight to offer on this topic, we can turn to the Internet.
Ergo: Hallmark. This page offers tons of suggestions for corny, punny greetings—and I do mean tons. They offfer a pumpkin-splitting number of categories, from “Jokes and Puns” (“Best WITCHes for a happy Halloween! Sorry if I SPELLed that wrong!”) to “Heartfelt” and “Religious” (!) to “Fun With Kids” to “Seasonal”—a nod to non-Halloween autumn traditions like harvests and apple-picking—and lots more, even including “Fun Closings.”
A Good Housekeeping article offers suggestions for text on cards or social media. It also provides wordsmithing advice for occasions such as birthdays falling on or near the spooky date—and, as with our prior source, is both generous and shameless with its awful puns:
Do you want a scary quote that will spark your friends’ imaginations? Or are you looking for something a little more PG to share with the neighborhood kids? Once you choose a lane, we’ve got a ton of Halloween jokes and classic quotes that will do the trick (get it?).
Of course, if you’re celebrating a friend who was born on All Hallows’ Eve by throwing them a Halloween-themed birthday party, you’ll need some frightfully good wishes for them too.
I like this site’s clean, appealing graphics and its creative text suggestions, which range from thoughtful (“Here’s a wish for a special someone who shares a birthday with the ghost, witches, and vampires. You are still way cooler. Happy birthday!”) to pithy (“Eat, drink and be scary”).
“The Today Show” ups the ante with 93 Halloween greetings tips—including suggestions for digital antic offerings that go beyond written words:
From funny and cute wishes like “Creepin’ it real, y’all,” to familiar sayings from some of your favorite Halloween songs including “Ghostbusters,” “This is Halloween” from The Nightmare Before Christmas, and Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” we’ve got everything you need to make them positively howl in delight.
Also within in this page is a link to another focussed solely on “135 Halloween jokes to get friends and family howling in laughter ... Perfect for kids and adults, these corny puns, knock-knocks and one-liners are a real scream.”
If you’re booing right now (and not wearing a ghost costume) or, at the very least, groaning out loud, that’s to be expected after reading these bad-but-good dad jokes that are just right for Halloween.
Naturally, the marketing site WordStream has suggestions—70 of them—for using Halloween greetings in your promotion efforts. One example:
Happy Halloween to all of our awesome customers! We are so grateful for your support, so we just wanted to send a boo 👻 to you from our crew. We hope to see you soon!
Plus, it features a link to a 2017 piece about a woman who costumed her dog as a mop. I haven’t decided whether I think this is horrifying or the funniest thing I’ve seen in weeks. I lean toward the latter, because, based on the visual, the dog seems to be enjoying it more than anybody else.
Lagniappe: The best ghost storyteller ever, even factoring in Twain, was Edgar Allen Poe, whose own life mirrored many of the philosophical complexities of his stories. His biography is much more nuanced than the one that has been portrayed since moments after he breathed his last—in some cases, the portrait we have painted is the polar opposite of the actual 19th-century man. Here are five things you might not have known about EAP. If you’d like to learn more, I enthusiastically recommended A Mystery of Mysteries: the Death and Life of Edgar Allan Poe by Mark Dawidziak.