The days are getting shorter. There is a chill in the air. Darkness is encroaching. Our primal fears of the coming deadly winter need to be expressed.
That is what Halloween is all about, after all—a festival of death, a celebration of decay, a much-needed annual reckoning with the fact that like the drying grass and the falling leaves, we will not live forever.
Some of us understand that we will cease to exist: ashes to ashes dust to dust etc. But others are really not getting that. You can tell who's who based on the Halloween decor on display.
What follows is NOT an evaluation of Halloween decorations based on the traditional metrics of "effort," "creativity," and "spookiness." I have not even considered logistical challenges such as year-round storage. You won't see a single carved pumpkin.
No, whether you like it or not, by decorating your stoop, you have opted into a citywide dialogue about what happens when you die.
In ranking the following decorations adorning homes in Brooklyn, I am weighing the complimentary attributes of whimsy and horror, to derive how much (or indeed, if at all!) the decorators grasp their own mortality.