The summer is rolling to an end in this hemisphere. Kids are going back to school. Beaches are closing. Hurricanes are brewing in the Atlantic. Business people are setting up auto responses to emails that say, “I’ll be out of the office until Tuesday, September 4.” Shops are poised to fill shelves with Halloween merchandise. And travelers are on their way home.
In other words — It’s Labor Day Weekend, summer’s last hurrah!
This, of course, started me thinking about seasonal monsters and how certain kinds of monsters seem to thrive in fiction set at certain times of the year. Yes, I know there are year-round vampires and plenty of paranormal goings-on during every season. But there are some combinations that simply work well together.
Maybe it’s a Dickensian thing, but Christmastime seems filled with ghosts. The Winter Solstice — with its short days, long nights and both the promise and regrets of a year’s ending/beginning — is simply a haunted and haunting time of the year.
The last few stories and novels I’ve read that featured Pagans dancing in moonlit rituals all took place in summer. Let’s face it; dancing naked in the woods IS a summer thing — like skinny-dipping and catching fireflies — none of that works when there’s a chill in the air.
You’d think that vampires would be at their best in winter (those long nights) but a vampire with an overcoat? No way. A cape? Maybe. But a parka and snow-boots in a vampire’s wardrobe? Never. It’s impossible to hunt inconspicuously for dinner on a winter’s day dressed in a summer suit.
Werewolves are always sneaking home as the sun rises. This is absolutely NO FUN on a sub-zero morning in January. But I think wizards and other practitioners of Magik would like winter. I’m not sure why, but the transition of fall into winter, the gradual increase in darkness, the crisp almost electric feeling of a chill in the air, just seems right for magical spells.
It’s Labor Day Weekend! Happy end-of-summer. I’d better grab a few minutes of those slow late summer sunsets before it’s time to make costumes for Halloween.
Most people like warm food. I can picture our bodies being colder in the winter being something of a turn off for a vampire.
Skinny dipping in the winter makes me think of an off shoot of the polar beer club. This is an obscure off shoot that doesn’t get as much press (with good reason).
I’m not one for dirty looks, but when one of the guys I know from dancing suggested I join him at the annual polar bear club swim off Coney Island Beach on New Year’s Day I gave him my best withering stare! Now, a polar BEER club, sounds a great deal more tempting.
The hot/cold lunch issue with vampires in also fun. There might be a short story there.
My mythology is very rusty but wasn’t there some goddess who had to return to Hades every winter, and was reborn again every spring?
-sigh- my brain is like the world’s worst filing cabinet, I can never find anything I want when I want it.
The door to the filing cabinet may be sticky, but the contents are still intact!
Persephone was the daughter of Demeter. She gets abducted and carried to the underworld to become Hades bride. Demeter basically put a stop to agriculture until her daughter is returned to the regular world. BUT — isn’t there always a but — since Persephone had consumed some food in the underworld (a few pomegranate seeds) she most live part of the year as Hades Queen and that is WINTER when nothing grows.
I’m sure there’s a filing cabinet somewhere just like the excellent Ms. Flory’s that hasn’t been opened in some time. Inside are all the files on all the Gods time has forgotten who haven’t been enjoying their enforced retirement as we’d have hoped.. After all, there’s only so much bingo you can play.
They’ve all been hoping a new worshipper is coming along to bring them back into play. That should give us plenty of seasonal ones to brighten our days. I give fair warning though, the first person to start thinking of reviving Bastet or any other Cat God or Goddess is in trouble, I have access to a shotgun.!!!!
xxx Massive Hugs Candy xxx
Of course I worship Bastet — or her descendants. LOL…
When I was a Star Trek loving kid, I remember adoring the episode about the Greek Gods as aliens. Only one is left, Apollo. The others let them selves disappear into the wind when no one was left to worship them. He waits on a lonely planet and thinks he will be revived as a god by the humans from the starship. No such luck. They are people of science who don’t need him.
Great ideas. Not sure if the execution was much — 1960s TV and all, but… still a great idea.
I’m not sure what kind of seasonal monster would have been lurking in the tunnel I rode my bike though on Tuesday. I biked the Hiawatha Trail, and the first 1.7 miles goes through a very dark, wet, cold, and foggy tunnel. As I rode and listened to the various drips coming down, I got totally creeped-out even though it was my second time going through.
A dark, wet tunnel is practically a season unto itself!
And a creepy one, too…