We're celebrating Halloween tonight, because the real deal falls on a Sunday, and we can hardly observe Satan's Birthday on the Lord's Day, can we? So the City Council, in its corrupt yet Christian wisdom, simply declared the holiday moved.
Oddly enough, in their enthusiasm to provide Halloween alternatives, our local churches schedule so many "Fall Festivals", and the various Baptists and Methodists fall over themselves to avoid going head to head with each other on the same evening, Halloween becomes a two-week-long whoopteedoo in our corner of southeast Georgia.
The Downtown Development people have no such qualms: They're putting on a "Do Your Own Thriller Video" on Main Street tonight at nine, when you can moonwalk to the dulcet tones of that well-known paragon of virtue, the late Mr. Jackson. This will be followed by a live Rocky Horro Picture Show at the Arts Center.
The local university also gets in on the act in various ways. A large group of students creates a Haunted Forest every year (you get chased through the pine trees by assorted zombies and some kid in a baseball cap carrying a fake chainsaw), while the Botanical Garden does a scary trail (more chainsaw-wielding frat boys.) Who says this town is boring?
