The holiday season should begin at Halloween. In my mind, if I can make it to Halloween, I can make it through the rest of the year. Besides, the holidays are the only time I allow myself to work on jigsaw puzzles. Puzzles slow cognitive aging, according to an article or two on the National Institute of Health, but I’d do them anyway. I’ve loved jigsaw puzzles since I was a kid. Part of our holiday tradition is that “Santa” leaves a nice one under the tree. This year I sent a note to the North Pole requesting a Halloween-themed puzzle. It arrived for my birthday instead. One October weekend while recovering from either a flu or Covid vaccine (I get them at the same time) I decided to put it together. I wasn’t concentrating well enough to read or write.
We have a couple other Halloween-themed puzzles. Last year, to celebrate the publication of Sleepy Hollow as American Myth, I put together the one we have of John Quidor’s painting of the Headless Horseman chasing Ichabod Crane. We also have a puzzle with horror movie posters on it. Maybe it’s time to start a new Halloween tradition. With things so expensive these days, tricking out the house for treaters is costly. I went into a Spirit Halloween earlier in October and saw costumes priced at $100 (almost enough to buy some of my books!). I know Halloween is a major spending holiday now, but that puts things out of reach. Besides, we now have three Halloween-themed puzzles, so I can rotate them and use what we already have. And maybe help this creaky old brain from declining too swiftly.
Puzzles satisfy a need for completion. Who doesn’t like the satisfaction of getting something done? And they leave you with something fun to look at for a few days. Of course, over Christmas I tend to work on them with family, and lots of interesting conversation can take place around the puzzle table. And my mind turns to the wonders of the holidays starting around August, but I wait until later in the season to reward myself with things like puzzles. (Scary movies are fair game year-round, of course.) Puzzles are kind of a parable for life. They represent taking chaos and making order out of it. There’s the drama and fear that pieces could be missing. The struggle to visualize what might fit into such a space when all the remaining pieces look so ordinary. If the holiday season began earlier, puzzle-building season could be expanded to the benefit of our brains.
