![\"\"](\"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2026\/09\/2025-10-31-20-giant-skeletons-in-september-1-v2.jpg\")
Pumpkins, bats and clouds parting to reveal a glowing moon. These are classic images of Halloween, and by extension, fall. And it seems that this year they were showing up much earlier than usual. Perhaps it is simply my algorithm, but it appeared that people were decorating for Halloween just as soon as the calendar flipped to September, and occasionally even earlier. Ten-foot-tall plastic skeletons began crawling out of front lawns, and five different kinds of \u201cspooky\u201d decorations stocked Michaels\u2019 shelves. Holiday creep is a very visible phenomenon, but perhaps there are other reasons that can be ascertained beyond the rapacious needs of consumerism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Saying modern society is very disconnected from nature is an obvious statement at this point, but what we do not seem to consider as often is how disconnected we are from time. Everything is always moving incredibly fast, and everything is on demand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, long as you pay for all the streaming services you can watch whatever, whenever. Food is not seasonal so long as it can be shipped from South America or California. Packages can come in 24 hours, not two weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Time is something to fast forward through, not to experience. This has negative effects on us as humans, even though we like the convenience that comes from being unmoored from time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The concept of a serious liturgical calendar is foreign to many of us raised Protestant, but the role they played in daily life can help us understand why exactly glowing inflatable yard decorations start appearing when kids go back to school. Liturgical calendars exist in many religions going back to at least the Romans. Festivals and days of remembrance were tied to moon cycles and agriculture, and presented real physical things that could mean something not only to the heart, but to the stomach as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
These special events were not a \u201cjust because\u201d thing \u2014 they set a repeatable and steady order to the year. We still have holidays, of course, the religious and the civic, but they leave large spans of time that end up meaning only what we make of them, and that tends to just be work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, in these gaps that used to be filled by the Dormition of Mary or Michaelmas, all we can do is put up decorations for a holiday still two months away. We need ways to keep ourselves grounded, to connect to each other and to the land we live on, but so often these days there isn\u2019t much structure for that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We\u2019ve cobbled together what liturgical calendar we can, but compared to the rich examples from the past, it barely passes muster. Yet this shouldn\u2019t be a reason to laugh at people who adhere to it, but we should see in them a need we also have for continuity and connection. Perhaps you too can put out a pumpkin, just make sure you have someplace to dispose of it when it starts to decompose.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Looking for liturgy in a disorganized calendar<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":2142,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[215],"tags":[66,38,29],"class_list":["post-1119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinions","tag-madelyn-braho","tag-issue-2025-10-31","tag-perspectives"],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2026\/09\/2025-10-31-20-giant-skeletons-in-september-1-v2.jpg",745,482,false],"thumbnail":["\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2026\/09\/2025-10-31-20-giant-skeletons-in-september-1-v2.jpg",150,97,false],"medium":["\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2026\/09\/2025-10-31-20-giant-skeletons-in-september-1-v2.jpg",300,194,false],"medium_large":["\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2026\/09\/2025-10-31-20-giant-skeletons-in-september-1-v2.jpg",745,482,false],"large":["\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2026\/09\/2025-10-31-20-giant-skeletons-in-september-1-v2.jpg",745,482,false],"1536x1536":["\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2026\/09\/2025-10-31-20-giant-skeletons-in-september-1-v2.jpg",745,482,false],"2048x2048":["\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2026\/09\/2025-10-31-20-giant-skeletons-in-september-1-v2.jpg",745,482,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"Ian Schartner","author_link":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/author\/schartnerij23\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Looking for liturgy in a disorganized calendar","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1119"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1119\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2191,"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1119\/revisions\/2191"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}