By Brian Boone

Why should autumn get all the fun? Turn the scorching season into the spooky season by celebrating the little-known summer holiday of Summerween. 

The Summerween came rolling in

Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader feels a special connection to the recently conceived holiday of Summerween due to proximity. The Bathroom Reader operates out of the real Pacific Northwest, while a fictional Oregon town is the setting of the 2010s Disney cable cartoon series Gravity Falls. An episode featured a supernatural-influenced town celebrating Halloween in June, thus Summerween, and the festivities involve decorations, candy, costumes, and monsters. 

Carving it out

Every holiday needs its signature decorations, and since Halloween acoutrements are so coached in the colors and spirit of autumn, Summerween gets some hot weather adaptations. In other words: Carve a funny or scary face into a watermelon like you would a pumpkin.

This is scary

As it was on Gravity Falls and regular Halloween, there has to be an element of the frightening and unexplained on Summerween. The solution: ghost stories and scary movies. The twist: Do them outside. Get some friends and family and tell those tales of horror and woe around a campfire or a firepit. As for the movies, do those out of doors, too — grab a projector and turn your backyard into a temporary theater. 

This is sweet

For kids, Halloween is all about the trick-or-treating — few things are more fun than dressing up in a costume and gathering candy just for asking. Plan a Summerween trick-or-treating event in your neighborhood, or with some closely located friends in a progressive party-type situation. The best part about Summerween vs. Halloween: Parents don’t have to tell kids to wear a jacket to stay warm and they don’t damage the credibility or look of the costume.