It’s certainly fall here in Bloomington, Indiana. The stately maple tree in my son’s neighborhood would surely brook no dissent on the matter. His leaves pop with a fire of red, bringing color to his post and striking a contrast to the drab asphalt of the streets. The bed of leaves at his base, and the Halloween pumpkins on the lawn all scream that it is late October in the Midwest, and that all is as it should be.
I’ve seen a couple of memes floating about, mostly on Reddit and the like, making fun of Americans for calling this season “fall.” It’s the typical, “Hurr durr, Americans are dumb! They call it fall because leaves fall down.” The enthymeme being that the rest of the, presumably, proper English speaking world would call the season by its appropriate name, “autumn.”
Interestingly, the word autumn derives from the Latin word “autumnus.” The exact meaning of this word is said to be unclear. My trusty AI guides tell me that autumnus is actually itself a derivative of the even older Etruscan root word “autu.” The exact meaning of this word is also unclear, except to say that it had “connotations” of the passing of the year.
Perhaps it’s my North American English sensibilities, but I think I’ll go with the descriptive word that has meaning, rather than the obscure word derived from the suggestions of long dead languages.
So, fall it is.
Aside from simply being a pedant, I think it’s fair to say that the word “fall” has more meaning to me. Though, our English speaking family abroad may ridicule us, fall captures the nature of life.
People fall. So do leaves. Regimes too (perhaps one here in the US in a few days). In odd support of this point, I’ve never thought of the leaves as living things. Perhaps they are. I’ve always thought of them as just a part of the tree that gets shed when the time is right, much like a snake might shed her skin. This line of thought suggests to me that we are in a transitory season of life. Transitory but inevitable. All of life and its institutions follow the same pattern: birth, life, and then death. The word fall just sums up the part of the pattern we’re currently in – that transition between life and dormancy. A period of fall, indeed.
All said, I love fall. I love the color. I love the cooler temps (Lord knows, I was not made for the heat). Even as we begin to prepare for the cold, it all suggests to me that we made it! We’ve managed to stick around for another cycle of life. I think that’s something worth celebrating. Maybe that’s why the neighborhood maple shows out with all of his colors. He’s celebrating too.
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