Halloween or All Hallows Eve

They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost. [Jesus] said to them, "Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have." -  Luke 24:37-39 (NRSV)

Halloween or Harvest Festival? It seems that as we approach All Saints Day the debate rages about what the correct Christian thing is to do with the night before this most hallowed celebration of the church. To begin we need just a little background. Where exactly did this Halloween come from? I turned to one of my favorite sources for information historical and found this summary of the holiday:

Straddling the line between fall and winter, plenty and paucity, life and death, Halloween is a time of celebration and superstition. It is thought to have originated with the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, when people would light bonfires and wear costumes to ward off roaming ghosts. In the eighth century, Pope Gregory III designated November 1 as a time to honor all saints and martyrs; the holiday, All Saints’ Day, incorporated some of the traditions of Samhain. The evening before was known as All Hallows’ Eve and later Halloween. Over time, Halloween evolved into a secular, community-based event characterized by child-friendly activities such as trick-or-treating. In a number of countries around the world, as the days grow shorter and the nights get colder, people continue to usher in the winter season with gatherings, costumes and sweet treats.

(From: http://www.history.com/topics/halloween/history-of-halloween)

There is a lot more detail about the roots of Halloween, its traditions and their origins so check it out if you want to know more. My interest is in the fact that present day Christians seem torn about this annual dip into the mysterious, monstrous, metaphysical and macabre.   Many of us don’t like the evil or demonic bent to this annual celebration of the dark side while at the same time our culture has adopted Halloween. It ranks 8^th on the list for holiday spending which includes Back to School and the Super Bowl. When you look at what I would call holidays Halloween is 6^th behind (in order) Winter Holidays, Mother’s Day, Valentine’s Day, Easter, and Father’s Day. In the US we spent $6.9 billion on Halloween last year. So why is it that Halloween has such a hold on us? All the holidays that come in ahead of it on the spending list include the expectations of expensive gifts yet on Halloween we give out candy and usually small treats that don’t cost a lot. The spending on Halloween is mainly for costumes and decorations.

In anthropological terms some form of holiday that has as its main component ghost, spirits, demons, etc is almost universal among human cultures throughout time. Call it superstition, call it fear, call it an attempt to understand things that go bump in the night, call it a way to address the human need for understanding what happens after death, call it whatever but this celebration of the mysterious and monstrous seems hardwired into the human psyche. To pretend that Christians don’t share in this is absurd. All you have to do is look at the healing stories of Jesus to see the presence of this in our roots. All you have to do is look at the official rituals of the Roman Catholic Church to find ones for exorcisms. Why then do we want to gloss it over or in some way separate ourselves from this very human holiday?

Mostly, I think, it has to do with appearances. That’s right, some Christians want to present themselves to the world in a way that makes them appear more civilized, less superstitious, less carried away by fanciful and in their minds, twisted aspects of the unsaved hordes. After all, they believe, if we say that we are God’s chosen ones we have nothing to fear. They think that the waters of baptism remove the mysterious and monstrous from their midst. They honestly believe that by wearing a mummy mask, going trick-or-treating, carving pumpkins and enjoying the mysterious you are somehow give Satan an opening to attack your very soul.

But the stuff of Halloween is beneficial to us. Psychologist tells us that it is healthy to have a way to let yourself go, be scared and try on another way of life in a safe and socially accepted way. The scary aspect allows us to experience an adrenaline rush in a safe way but also to master deep-seat fears. It gives us a way to harmlessly live out our fantasies. Fundamentally healthy people want to be scared in a safe environment so they can experience the feelings and learn about how they react to fear without worrying about the outcome. Halloween, horror movies, roller coasters, etc all provide us with a way to safely explore fear and our reactions and help us learn how to deal with fear when it comes up in our lives.

So I encourage you to put on that costume of the person you most want to be like but aren’t. Take in a haunted tour of some house or the Shanghai Tunnels, have a late night picnic snack in a cemetery or do whatever scares you while in a safe environment and allow yourself to know what it’s like to feel afraid and learn something about yourself. One caution, if you have had real-life moments of fearing for your life be gentle with yourself if you choose to get scared. Don’t do something to cause those real life horrors to come back to life.

Dear God, thank you for our imaginations. Thank you for safe places to be sacred. Thank you for the times we can learn about ourselves and still have fun. Be with anyone who is going through real life horrors and help us work to make the world safe so that the only scary things that happen are things that are safe. Amen.