It sounds downbeat. I’m old enough to remember when the first thing people thought of when they heard ‘Black Friday’ was the stock market crash. But at some point in the waning years of last century it morphed into a retail holiday (strange term–are other holidays mostly wholesale?) So, still the association with markets and commerce, but now it’s happy–or at least frenetic, as we realize how much Yuletide shopping is still to do (more about that later).

Outside here, in the country, it’s Black Friday in a different sense. The days are dark, and the few weeds left standing are black skeletons. Endless waves of leaves, skeletal too from our drought, blow over the ground. This is an in-between season, not quite fall and not quite winter, when nature’s housekeeping enters a rough and ready phase. Things freeze, things rot–sometimes both at once. To clear the way for new life, of course, but at the moment it’s hard to believe in that.

Which may be why this moment falls midway, too, between the year’s twin foci of supernatural horror–Halloween (or Samhain) and Yule. Ghost stories are traditional for both holidays. But to me, their different stations on the year’s wheel lend themselves to different kinds of tales. For Halloween, the bodies that return to life or half-life–vampires, zombies, the dead lovers in old ballads who return for a quick kiss or just to hang out at the foot of your bed. Or those quickened by a life strangely different: werewolves, or witches taking the shape of cats or hares. For Yule, all the skeletons have been picked clean, white and gleaming, snowfall shrouds the earth’s browner bones, and traditional ghosts shimmer in the darkness of the year’s longest night.

We are always standing at some sort of crossroads–the place that you bury things, decide which turn to take, or make deals with supernatural entities. But at times like Black Friday it’s easier to feel that. Especially since, in our own unique here and now, we’re not poised just between fall and winter, but–based on what many are saying–between a very realistic, detailed specter of World War Three and the (slightly wispier) spirit of a future age beckoning us to Mars.

But life goes on (we trust). Which means holidays happen, and on holidays, people hold holiday fairs. Some of which are virtual. At one of which I happen to have, as it were, a virtual booth. I told you we’d get back to the commercial aspect of Black Friday:

https://basedbooksale.substack.com/p/2024-black-fridaycyber-monday-based

All the books are free or 99 cents. Just about my whole oeuvre is on sale there…to date, because Real Soon Now, the Sean’s Saga trilogy will be complete. Probably in the New Year when there’s briefly less to do with gardens, and animals, and holidays.

So to anyone who’s read this far–happiness, prosperity and luck to you and yours in 2025, and may the current year’s noisy ghost pass gently and quietly into that good night.