This is the time of Halloween celebration. This Page is written about ten years after the Page for the date in the first volume of my daily musings about Christians, life meaning, principally related to family, culture and spiritual experience. During the years these Pages were written and then edited from time to time, as were all the Pages, the essential concepts of the essays were in place in the first years after the turn of the 20th to the 21st Century. We are now, at this current editing, near the end of second decade of the 21st century. What has happened in the intervening years between the first volume ending and the rest? I continue to look at life meaning with a second round in nearly the same themes for the dates – as in this Page’s incident with Halloween. Part of my larger purpose is to discover either advance or retreat.
I hold an even greater negativity about the place of Halloween in American life than at that initial writing. The whole culture for the day has morphed into near unbelievable status in the society. Nationally the people spend an enormous fortune on costumes, treats, bizarre parties with odd decorations; and, major sales promotions that now rival that found in the Christmas season, but with less life benefit than the gift exchange and idealism that the Yuletide Season brings. Halloween, once Christian in intent, is the only holiday in America that I dislike (of those I know). The emphases are quite opposite to Christian ideals.
One acknowledges that some of the present practices grew out of both pagan and religious interests. Those interests were garbled, mixed, amended, and provide the current cultural stew we call Halloween. One wonders if the witch-hunts in the New England Colonies had anything to do with the current interest in holiday witches. Does the doctrine of Hell have anything to do with Halloween? So we might expand the search for sources of the current unexplainable preoccupation with odd voodoo sounds, skeletons, witches, and goblins. The history of Halloween was recently documented in a major program of the History Channel. There was clearly noted the influence of fear, darkness, of ill will, of death and suffering related to the sources and practices of Halloween – ghosts and goblins. The negative humor violates affirming life.
When I was a lad the trick or treat concept had been born. It was literal. On the day following Halloween the newspapers chronicled the tricks of the odd day. Windows were broken, bicycles were hoisted to roofs of houses, tires were deflated, and the list extends to the bizarre punishments fulfilled on those who did not treat. Stones were thrown and fires were set. Sometimes treat denial was not involved, and victims were not given real choice. Happily, tricks have largely died away even if the children keep the phrase trick or treat. Seldom do we now hear of tricking. However, Halloween events and narratives have increased. Even though many persons carry tongue in cheek attitudes and smile, the concepts remain deplorable, and dark accents have grown. They contribute to a bizarre crudity, especially among the young, but extending to the adults as well. Television accents the ghoulish programs with revolting horrors, streams of blood from wounds, decapitations, large canine teeth in ugly creatures and witches on brooms. We know little about the peculiar mimicking of satanic religions on this date. I apologize to pumpkins for their inclusion.
Catholic Christians made the period a spiritual period of humility, noted by emphasis on those who had been granted official Sainthood by the church, and that followed by All Saints Day, to note the quality of lives by the millions who might never be named as leading Saints of the Church. It was to be a time of humility, of matching the life quality of those, even of one’s own family, who were righteous and carried the duty of righteousness and service to their fellow beings – and to God. One wonders how a civil people would create a holiday based on sinister and horror humor. It is not likely to be corrected in my time, but I am comforted to have railed against the day of Halloween. It provides an excuse to instruct one’s children about spiritual truth and meaning. Offer a good treat after the discussion. Some Christians insist that the whole thing is a joke. We forget that all experience is educational, in some way – good or ill. For me the conclusion is that my time is for God and reality, not dark and odd caricatures. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020