Gilmore Girls, Ugg boots and PSLs (or football, hoodies and holidays, depending on the kind of person you are): what do they all have in common?
It is officially fall on the Notre Dame campus. Fall is a lot of people’s favorite season, especially here. The beginning of September means game days, moving past those awkward first few weeks of classes and the nicest weather we will experience until next spring. People here love fall so much, they're willing to sacrifice studying abroad if they can’t go in the spring — nobody at ND wants to miss a fall.
While reflecting on the beginning of the season and discussing my excitement with my friends, I began to wonder if our love of autumn is almost a little morbid. Think about it: the beautiful orange and red trees we’re so excited to see are leaves dying and decaying; the cooling weather is a sign that the days are about to get dark and short. For Halloween, we carve pumpkins into scary faces and leave them on our porches to slowly rot. Halloween itself, the hallmark holiday of the season, is a holiday celebrating death, monsters, and fear. Isn’t it a little strange we glorify the fall so much?
Perhaps it is a coping mechanism — when surrounded by the dark and cold, we invent reasons to celebrate and find light. The glamorization of autumn could represent human optimism: our ability to find the positives in even the most overwhelming negatives.
But if our love for fall is metaphorical, why don’t we celebrate the spring, the time of renewal and growth? Starbucks doesn’t sell a limited-edition beverage to announce that we made it through another long, dark winter, Ugg doesn't make an airy sandal to enjoy the warming weather and football has ended. Maybe, then, our love of the fall is rooted in consumer culture — we love to make fall-themed purchases and participate in the “fall aesthetic,” after all. My FYP (for you page) is full of TikTok Shop must-haves for trendy fall outfits, ads for Rory Gilmore’s favorite reads and cute Chiefs sweatshirts I can order on Etsy (TikTok knows the threepeat is going to happen).
The truth is, fall has been chronically misrepresented in our culture. Every summer, I get so excited about watching “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” and all the new sweaters I’m going to buy. By the end of October, I have been sick four times, defaulted to always wearing sweats and procrastinated studying for my midterms so long I ran out of time before Halloween to watch Charlie Brown.
As disappointing as these fall-time traditions are, the holidays are even more disappointing. Thanksgiving, for example, is one of the worst holidays of all time. The only national holiday that requires more work than going to class, Thanksgiving, is about spending all day in the kitchen cooking and cleaning massive meals that consist of some extremely mediocre foods (wet mushy stuffing and bizarre “cheesy” casseroles make Thanksgiving scarier than Halloween to me). If you genuinely love Thanksgiving foods, then you can’t convince me that you don’t prefer Christmas: you eat most of the same foods but on a more manageable scale, and with presents.
Halloween is fun, I’ll admit, but like other party-oriented holidays, such as New Year’s Eve, it always falls into the same disappointing pitfalls. How much fun can you really be having when you have to get up and go to class the next morning? It’s also always too cold to wear the outfits you planned and you’re freezing when you wear them anyway. Fewer and fewer kids in cute costumes come to your door every year (where are they going?) and if we’re being honest, people rarely recognize that hilarious, genius costume idea you came up with.
If you’re a die-hard fall lover, don’t let me ruin your excitement. Appreciate the cute dining hall decorations and the brief non-freezing weather while we have it. Just remember that if the autumn months kind of depress you, like they sometimes do for me, there’s hope in sight. In a couple of months, we’ll be romanticizing piles of slightly brown snow, massive coats and “Love Actually” (or maybe “Die Hard” if you’re the aforementioned football-loving kind of person). There really is a season for everyone.
Sophia Anderson is a sophomore at Notre Dame studying political science. She is a transfer student and plans to go to law school. You can contact her at sander38@nd.edu.
