My Jack-o-Lantern stood guard with his grim visage glaring with candle-lit glow across my threshold on a rainy Halloween Night. Jack did his job. His job, as it has been since ancient Celtic pagan times, was to ward away demonic influence from my home.
My home was visited on Halloween night in 2016 by evil, evil which set my place to the torch and burned it to the ground in an act of felonious arson. I have rebuilt.
Since then, I take a serious view of the Celtic belief that the world of demonic shadows and evil may cross into this world of the living on Halloween. The veil separating the Dark Netherworld of death and this world of life and light is said to lift at the end of summer and allow demonic shadows to roam the earth on this night. I now take precautions; I carve a large gourd to cast a protective gaze in front of my vulnerable threshold, and I have a 12 gauge shot gun at the ready.
Jack has done his duty staring out before my door. All is now safe as November dawns. Jack begins to molder and he will not last much longer into autumn's short days. I think that rather than let him decay in a slow rot, it would be fitting to send jack out with a bang.
I take my pumpkin down to the cut alder logs, from which I cut my firewood, and place him with a view looking back at the home he admirably protected. I salute him and thank him for his service. I pumped the stock of my shot gun to load a shell into the chamber.
So, it comes down to a pun?
Smashing Pumpkins. What would be the best song from the rock music group to end with Jack? We Only Come Out at Night?
We only come out at night,
The sun is much too bright.