Halloween has become, year by year, more gory, more scary, more a celebration of death and violence and fear. Can't do it anymore. People start coating their houses and cars in bones and blood and monsters in early September; their homes are too scary to approach for trick or treating. I used to mock the "harvest festival" Christians and now I find I'm one of them. I'm not going to participate in a festival of celebration of evil and death. We still trick or treat, barely, but we know which houses are trying to frighten small children (that's not playful; it's ugly and juvenile and embarrassing that grown men are often behind it) and we avoid them and we probably only have another year or two before I call it quits for good. I have come to loathe Halloween. The way it is "celebrated" in Current Year is just a part of the culture of death whose tentacles are all around us already.
Thanks so much for your comment! I completely understand and sympathize with where you're coming from. What you're describing is something I’ve noticed as well—the commercialization of Halloween has turned it into something much darker, with a focus on gore and fear. Stores like Spirit Halloween really reflect that shift. I think it’s wise to avoid those aspects, especially when it turns homes and neighborhoods into something too frightening for children.
think that approach dives straight into the margins, missing the point of Halloween’s original intent. It’s really about subverting the darkness and placing the monsters in their proper place—showing their defeat rather than glorifying them. Halloween, at its core, is a celebration of victory over evil, not a glorification of it.
That said, I still believe Halloween can be done well by Christians, especially in a community of like-minded people. When we approach it thoughtfully, it can be an opportunity to model gospel hospitality and joy, standing as a contrast to the culture of fear around us. In that way, it can actually serve as a kind of apologetic—a way for us to show the world that we celebrate the victory of light over darkness, and that Christ has conquered evil once and for all.
A thoughtful piece. Not being an observer of Halloween, I suggest the Church would be better served by observing Reformation Day and considering what it would mean in our own lives and communities if we were reformed by a return to Scripture in our thinking and practice. Blessings.
I really enjoyed this, especially as my own views on tradition, paganism, symbolism et al have grown and deepened. Halloween as a practice doesn’t necessarily bother me, although I still have a nuanced take based on two points,
1) Given my increased familiarity with Jonathan Pageau’s work I’ve adopted his notions of centers and peripheries, hierarchies and inversions, and the phenomenon of “carnivalia” and what role that plays spiritually and civilizationally, times when we “let loose” and embrace the inverse (from little carnivals such as weekends and evenings to big ones like, well, Carnival). There’s a mentality I’ve noted in modernist Christianity where one leaving worship will say/think, “Alrighty then, now back to the real world,” and I think as a society if we had a time where the false and inverse was highlighted for a very strictly set time (especially leading up to times of repentance and asceticism, like w/ Carnival before Lent) we’d be able to foster the mentality that the real world is actually the Church and the Sunday commute isn’t leaving but ARRIVING to reality (A. Schmemann has a similar take).
2) Halloween’s greatest issue however still remains that it’s supposed to be “All Hallow’s Eve,” and so I can’t see how to have both: the honoring of departed Saints and the Carnival spirit. This perversion, which you allude to, is much similar to what happened with Christmas, which is that a time treated special owing to a society’s religious origins needs to be capitalized on by a now secularized and commercialized society. Christmas was easier to hijack as gift-giving had always been part of it, but what to do with a day about praying or singing litanies to a bunch of dead people? Ahh, fortunately there was this long forgotten Celtic holiday that involved door-to-door charades and mumming, let’s make that going door-to-door for commercial goods and donning expensive customs! Halloween spending totals, what, several billion dollars? My point, then, is that “HalloweenTM” is bad, but “Halloween as Carnivalia” is okay, although the only way I can feasibly see us pursuing a healthier vision for either is for Halloween to be subsumed into the established Western tradition of Carnival seasons and All Hallows’ Day being rediscovered (I think the cult of the saints could be a major antidote to modernity and disenchantment).
Halloween has become, year by year, more gory, more scary, more a celebration of death and violence and fear. Can't do it anymore. People start coating their houses and cars in bones and blood and monsters in early September; their homes are too scary to approach for trick or treating. I used to mock the "harvest festival" Christians and now I find I'm one of them. I'm not going to participate in a festival of celebration of evil and death. We still trick or treat, barely, but we know which houses are trying to frighten small children (that's not playful; it's ugly and juvenile and embarrassing that grown men are often behind it) and we avoid them and we probably only have another year or two before I call it quits for good. I have come to loathe Halloween. The way it is "celebrated" in Current Year is just a part of the culture of death whose tentacles are all around us already.
Thanks so much for your comment! I completely understand and sympathize with where you're coming from. What you're describing is something I’ve noticed as well—the commercialization of Halloween has turned it into something much darker, with a focus on gore and fear. Stores like Spirit Halloween really reflect that shift. I think it’s wise to avoid those aspects, especially when it turns homes and neighborhoods into something too frightening for children.
think that approach dives straight into the margins, missing the point of Halloween’s original intent. It’s really about subverting the darkness and placing the monsters in their proper place—showing their defeat rather than glorifying them. Halloween, at its core, is a celebration of victory over evil, not a glorification of it.
That said, I still believe Halloween can be done well by Christians, especially in a community of like-minded people. When we approach it thoughtfully, it can be an opportunity to model gospel hospitality and joy, standing as a contrast to the culture of fear around us. In that way, it can actually serve as a kind of apologetic—a way for us to show the world that we celebrate the victory of light over darkness, and that Christ has conquered evil once and for all.
A thoughtful piece. Not being an observer of Halloween, I suggest the Church would be better served by observing Reformation Day and considering what it would mean in our own lives and communities if we were reformed by a return to Scripture in our thinking and practice. Blessings.
(This’ll be lengthy, my apologies)
I really enjoyed this, especially as my own views on tradition, paganism, symbolism et al have grown and deepened. Halloween as a practice doesn’t necessarily bother me, although I still have a nuanced take based on two points,
1) Given my increased familiarity with Jonathan Pageau’s work I’ve adopted his notions of centers and peripheries, hierarchies and inversions, and the phenomenon of “carnivalia” and what role that plays spiritually and civilizationally, times when we “let loose” and embrace the inverse (from little carnivals such as weekends and evenings to big ones like, well, Carnival). There’s a mentality I’ve noted in modernist Christianity where one leaving worship will say/think, “Alrighty then, now back to the real world,” and I think as a society if we had a time where the false and inverse was highlighted for a very strictly set time (especially leading up to times of repentance and asceticism, like w/ Carnival before Lent) we’d be able to foster the mentality that the real world is actually the Church and the Sunday commute isn’t leaving but ARRIVING to reality (A. Schmemann has a similar take).
2) Halloween’s greatest issue however still remains that it’s supposed to be “All Hallow’s Eve,” and so I can’t see how to have both: the honoring of departed Saints and the Carnival spirit. This perversion, which you allude to, is much similar to what happened with Christmas, which is that a time treated special owing to a society’s religious origins needs to be capitalized on by a now secularized and commercialized society. Christmas was easier to hijack as gift-giving had always been part of it, but what to do with a day about praying or singing litanies to a bunch of dead people? Ahh, fortunately there was this long forgotten Celtic holiday that involved door-to-door charades and mumming, let’s make that going door-to-door for commercial goods and donning expensive customs! Halloween spending totals, what, several billion dollars? My point, then, is that “HalloweenTM” is bad, but “Halloween as Carnivalia” is okay, although the only way I can feasibly see us pursuing a healthier vision for either is for Halloween to be subsumed into the established Western tradition of Carnival seasons and All Hallows’ Day being rediscovered (I think the cult of the saints could be a major antidote to modernity and disenchantment).