The calendar luxuriates

In otherwise prosaic dates

Imposing unfunded mandates

That every thinking person hates

 

Although it offers lots to eat

Thanksgiving is always replete

With flocks of kin that bore and bleat

And all your substance do deplete

 

Despite conventional pretense

The Christmas holiday presents

A month of ruinous expense

That profits you with indigence

 

New Year’s Eve is tailor-made

For trying on a new lamp shade

And drinking till your liver’s flayed

And mental functions all degrade

 

To woo your lovely Valentine

Requires a sturdy credit line

With which to win a concubine

Whom you’ll discover isn’t thine

 

July the Fourth is quite a lark

A-broil all day in swarming park

And when at last it comes full dark

Enjoy ten minutes’ flash and bark

 

On Labor Day the working Joe

Cannot laze on the patio

But toils from dawn to night-shadow

On chores around the old chateau

 

Is there no rite, no holiday

That doesn’t make a person pay

For tired and oversold cliche

With cash and care and brute decay?

 

Indeed, October’s dying wheeze

Exhales bone-chilling jubilees

Igniting spectral entities

With mad delights the blood to freeze

 

No kinfolk call upon this night

When spirits stalk the autumn blight

Shut up your drafty manor tight

And steep in solitary fright!

 

The season’s black heart can’t be found

On merchant’s shelf in commerce drowned

It rises up from frosted ground

An ancient daemon freshly crowned

 

Though leering creatures haunt your door

Remember, you, the antique lore

And banish them, as done of yore

With dainties from your pantry-store

 

Thirsting vampires, blood-thirst keen!

Creeping shades and skeletons lean!

It costs ye’ naught to make the scene

Upon the Eve of Halloween