Today is Halloween. At the turn of the 21st century it was announced that this has become America’s fastest growing special day of the year. Sales in costumes, candy, masks, and decoration oddities are now major business. By 2003 only Christmas and the Super Bowl (championship football) planned more parties and activity than did Halloween. The Halloween parties became more bizarre, scary and costumed than any other annual social context. Witches fly, creating a mythical use for brooms. Cardboard black cats appear with arched backs and eyes flashing orange. Strange looking men sport fangs, shaggy eyebrows and plastered black hair – set on skeletal faces. Revelers may skip all the fol-de-rol over-lay and dress as costumed skeletons.
Halloween may have lost more of its constructive meaning than any other days of the Christian calendar. Christian use of the date emerged from Celtic paganism, as replacement for bizarre practices. We need to remember that the created Christian calendar date was November 1 which, of course, was preceded by October 31. The date became, perforce, All Hallow E’en, or Eve of All Saints’ Day. Any overlooked saint of the Church was given November 1st for honor. October 31 is obviously the Eve of All Saints Day. Catholic Christian preparations for the day have been savagely digressed in the modern era. It has become the major holiday for the Wiccan people, some of whom are noted for exotic beliefs in witches, in evil or odd creatures, in concepts and practices of the nether world. For a few years the homosexual community attempted to make it their day. Worshipers of devils and demons claim this as their special annual day. It is being covered increasingly by the media, with tongue in cheek. Perhaps joking is implied, and made somewhat attractive to persons with a bent away from the God of love, of redemption, of eternity, of life. They argue that the Christian should not be so stuffy and take the nonsense in good stride. The Christian response is that God has a sense of humor, but He doesn’t joke about this kind of revelry, and grotesqueness. Good humor is not friendly to bad jokes. All activity has meaning.
Many good persons go along with the customs in the belief that it is all a charade to be followed in fun, so to dress their children in costume and permit them to go from door to door in the neighborhood to collect candy with a veiled threat, Trick or Treat. But, many adults and businesses are accenting Halloween festivities, even lengthening them through earlier days in October. Beneath the trappings of the current meaning of Halloween is the prevalence of intrigue, of fear, of ugliness, and of death. In reality the symbols are gross, distorted, unfaithful representations, but the effect, if those who are serious about the day have their way, is to wound the concepts of beauty, truth and goodness. Evil, death and ugliness are mingled with the glorious harvest season, and turned into a national joke. This is hardly what a thoughtful, general society ought to be doing. The residue of the accent of darkness and death falls on society. No one knows to what degree, but all human action creates some residue for good or ill. The Christian ought to be firm in resisting this day’s mood, practice and waste. The newly harvested pumpkin and fattening turkey are worthy of a better context – like Thanksgiving. I must honor the fact that the Trick or Treat feature has improved from my childhood. In our town the tricks did follow no treat. The most common were to break windows and the most unusual to raise a person’s car to the house roof. All sorts of misery showed up on the day after. There is more control now than then, but the slippery slope of making death into a holiday is bizarre. There is so much beauty that could come of it in honoring those saints who have offered so much to society. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020