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As evening falls, lanterns begin to glow. Families gather around tables laden with fruit and tea. Boxes of elaborately stamped mooncakes are opened and shared, and attention eventually turns upward to the moon. This is the Mid-Autumn Festival, one of the most beloved celebrations in Chinese culture. Also known as the Moon Festival, the holiday …

Halloween arrives surprisingly early at Walt Disney World. By late summer, pumpkins begin appearing along Main Street, U.S.A., seasonal treats arrive across the resort, and Magic Kingdom starts preparing for Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Party. By October, the combination of glowing jack-o’-lanterns, Disney villains, costumed characters, Haunted Mansion ghosts, candy trails, fireworks, and the occasional Headless …

There is something unusual about Halloween in America. It is a major celebration without a traditional family dinner, a day off work or a single prescribed way to observe it. You can spend October 31 handing out candy on the porch, taking children trick-or-treating, watching old horror movies, visiting a haunted attraction, carving pumpkins, attending …

Long before inflatable yard monsters, plastic candy buckets and elaborate home haunts, Halloween already had plenty of atmosphere. Old photographs and illustrations show candlelit jack-o’-lanterns, homemade costumes, decorated party tables and groups gathered for games that seem surprisingly familiar. Look a little closer, however, and vintage Halloween can also seem wonderfully strange. Party guests predicted …

Every October, millions of people voluntarily do things they would normally try very hard to avoid. We walk through dark buildings where strangers leap out at us. We watch movies about ghosts, monsters and masked killers. We wander through corn mazes after sunset, tell frightening stories around fires and decorate our homes with skeletons, spiders …

This article contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Halloween Squishmallows somehow manage to make bats, pumpkins, zombies, skeletons, and other spooky creatures look irresistibly cuddly. Every fall brings another assortment of seasonal characters, costume variations, licensed favorites, and limited releases, and the 2026 Halloween selection has plenty for collectors …

New York City does not approach Halloween quietly. By October, pumpkins appear on brownstone stoops, giant skeletons climb the fronts of buildings, haunted attractions open their doors, dogs parade through the East Village in costumes, and Greenwich Village prepares for one of the most spectacular Halloween celebrations in the country. There is something here for …

Born on September 18, 1933, Christopher Ricks has spent more than seven decades doing something deceptively simple: paying extraordinarily close attention to words. That attention has taken him from John Milton and John Keats to Alfred, Lord Tennyson, T. S. Eliot, Samuel Beckett, and Bob Dylan. Along the way, Ricks became one of the most …

Born on September 17, 1883, William Carlos Williams spent much of his life proving that poetry did not need grand subjects, distant places, or elaborate language to be meaningful. A wheelbarrow, a fire engine passing through a rainy city, weeds beside a hospital, or a note left on a kitchen table could all become poetry …

Breyten Breytenbach was a South African poet, writer, painter, teacher, and political activist whose long creative life unfolded across languages, continents, prisons, studios, classrooms, and states of exile. Born on September 16, 1939, in Bonnievale in South Africa’s Western Cape, Breytenbach became one of the most distinctive voices in modern Afrikaans literature. He helped reshape …