'It's Decorative Gourd Season, Motherfuckers' Will Never Die

To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven. A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted.  —Ecclesiastes 3:1-2

The autumn is the time to pluck up that which is planted, and, often, to arrange it in aesthetically pleasing centerpieces and porch displays. That’s right. It’s Decorative Gourd Season, Motherfuckers.

That trumpeting proclamation is the title of an essay Colin Nissan wrote for McSweeney’s Internet Tendency in 2009. The piece is an aggressively exuberant fist-pumping celebration of fall, and of the reason for the season: decorative gourds, of course. Ever since it was published, much like you can feel the wind changing outdoors as summer gives way to fall, you can tell when the weather is changing online, because eager tweeters with pumpkins in their eyes will start posting the essay once more. It is trotted out every fall, much like the “wicker fucker” Nissan dusts off in his opening paragraph in order to jam it full of “shellacked vegetables.”

Why? “Because it’s not summer, it’s not winter, and it’s not spring,”