First, what’s with the orange and black? And the pumpkins?
Second, why are we celebrating pain, evil, and death—and, at the same time, comic book heroes and movie characters and celebrities?
And third, what’s the (increasingly) big deal? Should Christians join the North American trend of decking out our houses, as well as ourselves, for Hallowe’en at a scale that now approaches—or in many cases surpasses—even the gaudy excesses of Christmas? Should we avoid Halloween entirely?
I frankly haven’t paid much attention to Halloween over the years. I dressed up and enjoyed trick-or-treating when pretty young, but then mostly ignored the day until my three boys were old enough to get into it. Costumes were a big decision each year and walking frozen Winnipeg streets and chilly Vancouver hills tested their commitment.
Once they grew out of it, however, I ignored it again. Now I have four new kids to care for, however, and a year ago, not long after we were married, their mother raised the issue with me afresh, this time with a distinct Christian angle. So now I do have to think (better) about it, and maybe the following can be useful to you, too.
Halloween has a Christian name—about which more below. It seems to have originated, though, in the festival of Samhain (“SOW [as in female pig]-en”) among the Celts of ancient Britain and Ireland—and in similar festivals on the European continent.
On 31 October, Saman, lord of death, called together the wicked souls that within the past twelve months had been condemned to inhabit the bodies of animals. Thus the occasion is still referred to in Ireland as Oidhche Shamhna, “Vigil of Saman.”
During the Samhain festival, the souls of some who had died were believed to return to visit their relatives’ homes. Those who had died during the year just ending were believed to begin their journey to the otherworld—and Halloween was their last chance to wreak vengeance on enemies.
Candles in houses and bonfires on hilltops thus were lit to guide the familial souls—and masks and costumes were worn to avoid the fury of adversial spirits. The bonfires, incidentally, attracted insects, which, in turn, attracted (you guessed it) bats.
This season was a “thin” time, during which the normal boundaries between everyday life and the occult (or “hidden”) became porous. The period was therefore thought to be favourable for divination—particularly on lifecycle matters such as marriage, health, and death.
On the next day, corresponding to November 1 on contemporary calendars, the new year was believed to begin. Winter was beginning, herds were returned from pasture, and land tenures were renewed.
When the Romans conquered the Celts in the first century, they added their own festivals of Feralia, commemorating the passing of the dead, and of Pomona, the goddess of the harvest (whose symbol is the apple). Nuts joined apples to represent the winter store of fruits. So the roasting of nuts and the sport known as “apple-ducking” or “dunking for apples”—attempting to seize with the teeth an apple floating in a tub of water—became a part of Halloween fun.
Humans and other beings associated with netherworlds thus came to the fore: witches (and their familiars: cats), hobgoblins, ghosts, fairies, and demons. These beings were appeased by offerings of food and drink, or portions of the crops, left outside for them to ensure the people and livestock survived the winter.
These spiritual worries were joined by various trappings of late autumn in northern Europe: bare trees, dead leaves, corn stalks, and pumpkins. (More about pumpkins presently.) Black and orange became the theme colours of Halloween: black for the death of summer and orange for the autumn harvest season.
In the seventh century, Pope Boniface IV established All Saints’ Day on May 13, a day to commemorate and call upon all of those recognized by the Church as living exemplary lives. In the following century, All Saints’ Day was moved to November 1. (Some sources indicate that this initiative came from Alcuin, the great Christian advisor to Charlemagne. If so, he was but following the lead of northern Europeans who were already commemorating the saints on that day—perhaps, although this is contested, in direct counterpoint to pagan harvest festivals such as Samhain.)
The evening before All Saints’ Day was the evening (“e’en”) of All Hallows, since “to hallow” means “to revere” or “to make holy”—as saints were. Thus we get Hallowe’en. (Under the impress of American practicality, most North Americans have dropped the apostrophe, as we shall hereinafter.)
By the end of the Middle Ages, the secular and the sacred days had merged. Many Christians in mainland Europe, especially in France, believed that on Halloween the dead of the churchyards rose for one wild, hideous carnival known as the danse macabre. This dance was often depicted in church decoration as part of the exercise known as mememto mori, the exhortation to remember one’s impending death and to get one’s spiritual house in order. The danse macabre was sometimes enacted in European village pageants and court masques, with people dressing up as corpses from various strata of society—one possible origin of Halloween costume parties.
The Reformation of the sixteenth century essentially put an end to the religious holiday of All Saints Day among Protestants. Veneration of the saints, let alone actually praying to them, was set aside in favor of prayer directly to God. In Britain especially, however, Halloween continued to be celebrated as a secular holiday.
Similarly, in America Halloween was repressed by the Puritans, along with other festivities such as Christmas itself, as another occasion that had become overrun with pagan excess. Still, traditions lingered, especially among the Scots-Irish who settled much of the Midwest and upper South. And when large numbers of immigrants, especially the Irish, came to the United States in the latter half of the nineteenth century, they took their Halloween customs with them. The twentieth century saw Halloween become one of the principal U.S. holidays.
At the turn of that century, Halloween parties for both children and adults became the most common way to celebrate the day. Parties focused on games, foods of the season, and festive costumes. Christian wariness about the season continued as parents were encouraged by newspapers and community leaders to take anything smacking of the dead or devilish out of Halloween celebrations.
Vandalism began to plague some celebrations. Youths sharpened the traditional Scottish and Irish custom of playing pranks on this night of weirdness. At the same time (between 1920 and 1950), the centuries-old practice of trick-or-treating was also revived.
The roots of this practice were in “souling,” “guising,” and “mumming.” Seen also during Advent, groups of people would disguise themselves and go door-to-door to sing and joke and expect food and drink in return. The distribution of “soul cakes” was
encouraged by the church as a way to replace the ancient practice of leaving food and wine for roaming spirits.
(I cannot resist the factoid that these practices on Halloween were first recorded in North America in my birthplace, Kingston, Ontario. In 1911, a newspaper reported children going "guising" around the neighborhood. Yes, good old Kingston: Home of spiritually suspect beggary.)
As with so much of Halloween lore, however, incommensurate ideas got blurred together. It became common for impersonate evil spirits in “guising”—and to wreak vengeance on stingy households.
By the 1950s, town leaders in both the U.S. and Canada had successfully domesticated trick-or-treating and Halloween had evolved into a holiday directed mainly at the young. Due to the high numbers of young children during the Baby Boom, parties moved from town civic centers into the classroom or home, where they could be more easily accommodated, while costumed door-to-door begging increased also.
The Baby Boom in fact inspired candy companies to market small, individually wrapped candies. People began to favour them out of convenience, of course, but candy did not dominate at the exclusion of all other treats (such as coins, fruits, and nuts) until the 1970s when parents started fearing anything not wrapped commercially.
That still leaves the Jack-o’-lantern to be explained. So here goes.
Clever Jack trapped the Devil and exacted from him the promise that he would leave off taking Jack to hell at his death. When Jack died, the Devil kept his word. Heaven, alas, didn’t want Jack either.
The Devil delightedly threw a live coal straight from the fires of hell at poor Jack. It was a cold night, so Jack placed the coal in a hollowed-out turnip to stop it from going out. Since that time, Jack and his lantern (“Jack-of-the-lantern”) have been seeking a place to rest. And since pumpkins are considerably lighter and easier to hollow out than turnips, Jack and the rest of us have prudently turned to them instead.
Today, Americans spend upwards of $6 billion on Halloween, with more than half a billion on costumes for . . . their pets. Halloween makes its appearance in stores by late September, if not earlier, and in some neighbourhoods house decorations have become far more elaborate for this holiday than for any other.
A Christian Musing upon Halloween
Let’s take the several elements of Halloween in turn. Then we’ll pull back to look at Halloween as a whole.
First, the neighbourhood solicitation of treats. Frankly, it seems ridiculous to sponsor a mild orgy of cheap candy for middle-class North American kids. This is a class of human beings who face serious threats of obesity because they seem never to lack for sugary carbohydrates.
Bring piles of fun food to shelters in your town? Sure. But that tokenism would mean more if matched with serious investment in the charity and social policy required to truly eliminate the indefensible scandal of child poverty in these rich countries.
Maybe it’s time to bring back the house (and church) parties and stop enriching M&M/Mars and their ilk to no good purpose. (I’m glad kids don’t read these columns. I don’t want their hate mail.)
Second, the costumes. It seems that in our time Halloween costumes (for kids and for adults) come in one of three modes: alter egos (especially heroes or villains—or mere celebrities), jokes (whether silly characters or visual puns), or frights (villains or victims). I can’t see any problem with the first two—except when the first combines with the third.
The third seems highly problematic to me. Dressing up and thus briefly impersonating something horrible is meant by almost no one nowadays what it might have meant to our ancestors (and to Christians in other countries who celebrate festivals of the dead): the serious Christian mockery of the Devil and of Death.
Without that plausible religious motive, there is something deeply disquieting about adorning oneself with symbols of evil. If you wouldn’t dream of wearing the uniform of a Nazi SS officer, why dress up as Freddie Krueger or Frankenstein’s monster?
UPDATE: I've been helpfully challenged on this point since the original post. I appreciate that real-world fears about anti-semitism, nationalistic violence, and absolutist governance would be triggered by a Nazi uniform versus the costume of a fictional character.
Context also could make quite a difference. An adult could wear something that would be wildly inappropriate on a kid. A costume that would amuse a party of young adults might shock and offend folks at a family celebration.
I also concede that I have no extensive interview data to lean on as to the several possible reasons why someone might enjoy a costume of a slashing killer. So perhaps there are benign motives here that escape me. (I get that someone might do so ironically—a contemporary version of mocking evil. Fine by me: go to it.)
I'll expand just briefly on my disquiet by saying only this: Why dress up as a villain? It's one thing to dress up as a troubled hero—from Hercules to Wolverine. But why impersonate, even for a single night, someone primarily identified with violence and cruelty—from Leatherface to, yes, Darth Vader? What are you saying about yourself and your values when this is how you choose to cosplay?
Third, the commercialization. There are very large companies who have invested in our ramping up of Halloween into a bizarre celebration of—well, what? Christmas and Easter make sense, even to the Western secular mind, as seasons of joy and fellowship. Thanksgiving has become a time of family feasting. Patriotic holidays—kept within non-idolatrous bounds—serve a commendable purpose as well.
Halloween? What do all the expensive decorations stand for? A celebration of the macabre, the violent, the occult, and the diabolical? Seems troublingly strange to blow all that money on a tribute to the awful.
So what about Halloween in general?
I smile at my friends who seek to reclaim October 31 as “Reformation Day”—since Martin Luther nailed up his 95 Theses on that date in 1517. But everyone dressing up as his or her favourite Reformer year after year could get old pretty quickly, especially since they all seem to have dressed exactly the same way.
As for the evangelical attempt to exploit Halloween with so-called Hell Houses, it strikes me as . . . worth reconsideration. They either fail to scare anyone into conversion, in which case they invite contempt, or they actually do scare people into conversion, in which case they invite contempt.
It’s not that I oppose the straightforward declaration of the wages of sin. I stand with Jonathan Edwards and his sermon on “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” I don’t think, however, that a downscale local version of a dark Disney ride is likely to connect anyone with the saving goodness of God nor the sustaining fellowship of a local church. And those are the two key ingredients in a genuine conversion that has a hope of lasting.
I pose for you, therefore, as I pose for myself, three questions about Halloween:
What are you celebrating?
With what are you celebrating?
What are you thereby saying—to your kids and to your neighbours?
And I wonder if the following Scriptural analogy might be useful to you as you answer.
The New Testament church ruled out any participation in the temple cults of other gods—and thus ruled out anything associated with them (so the quartet of forbidden practices in Acts 15:29, the practices typical of pagan worship).
Paul then, however, makes the distinction between that worship and the later detritus of that worship: the meat offered to idols that later is simply sold in the marketplace, having served its ritual purpose. Paul recognizes that for some Christians the association will be repellent. But he also teaches against any worry about something like residual magic in such meat. He cheerfully says that he would eat it himself. It’s just meat.
Paul doesn’t say, to be sure, that the idols are okay to take home with you for fun, or that sexual immorality is now okay because it isn’t happening in a pagan temple. He is saying that what is in itself good remains good even if someone else has temporarily attached an unpleasant meaning to it. Christians can redefine things for ourselves.
That principle helps me enjoy the many Christmas symbols that have pagan origins but later Christian meanings. And that principle would let me enjoy attending a Halloween party, or putting one on for the children, so long as there is nothing smacking of Samhain’s dark lord.
In short, so long as it’s truly happy, in an authentically wholesome vein, then Happy Halloween!
Otherwise, not.
