Halloween brings out the best in us
And why "Trick or treat" is more Christian than "You better watch out, you better not cry"
Halloween carries deep nostalgia for me. I remember as a kid - back in the late 1900s - dressing up for the Halloween parade at school, where we’d do Halloween crafts instead of ‘real’ school work. It must’ve been before the regulations hit, but the Halloween makeup we used blocked every pore of skin and pooled sweat in the thin membrane underneath the thick Teflon-like outer layer.
My mom and I would decorate the house. After school, my cousins would come over. We’d fuel up on our own candy supply at home1 before going out and hitting various subdivisions throughout town. Then we’d come back to my house and watch Elvira’s Halloween Special.
Oh, Elvira. How I miss thee.
My first celebrity crush.
I digress…
In seventh grade, my Language Arts teacher, Ms. West, was - I’m convinced - a witch. But a good witch, no doubt, and not a wicked witch like her name implied. Our class celebrated an extended Halloween. It started in September. We’d read a bunch of Poe and other various classic Halloween literature. The crescendo was reading Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury. When we finished, we watched the movie in class. It remains one of my Halloween favorites to this day.
That was right around the age that it was becoming less cool to trick-or-treat. When I was 16 (!), I finally got called out on a couple doorsteps for being too old. Yeah, I knew... They were right. But the sense of adventure and freedom… Of venturing out with family and friends dressed up in the wildest outfits and neighbors who I was always curious about opening their doors to us for a brief moment is such a fond memory. It saddened me to hang up the pumpkin bucket that one last time2.
So yes, I’ve always been a huge fan of Halloween. I’ve long had a proclivity for the macabre and eerie3.
I had some Christian friends growing up whose parents didn’t let them celebrate Halloween. I felt bad for them being cooped up while the rest of us were out trick-or-treating. But I wondered if I was going against my Christian tradition by partaking.
Now, as a pastor, I’m elated to say this is NOT true. You’d think that coming back to Christianity would make me less of a goth, but it’s only made me lean in even more. (But I’m only goth on the inside. Squarely in my season of life as a dad in his mid-40s, I’m more LL Bean than I am Hot Topic these days.) Now, I see All Hallows’ Eve with a more reverent posture.
The Christian church’s big Triduum (3 days) is for Easter, which is composed of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Easter Vigil on Saturday night. But we also have another Triduum - the three days of Allhallowtide - which starts tonight on All Hallows Eve (Halloween), then moves into All Saints’ Day on Nov. 1, and ends on All Souls’ Day which is the day after and corresponds with the Mexican holiday of Día de los Muertos.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again… I have a theory that in the US, culturally speaking, Halloween is more Christian than Christmas. At least, the way we celebrate the holiday is.
Christmas in the US (secular Christmas, at least) is all about the naughty/nice thing. It’s self-absorbed and turned inward. It’s all about getting on that ‘nice’ list.
But on Halloween, we don’t do a morality check at the door. We don’t stoop to little Timmy and ask in our smug grown-up voices, “Sooooo… Have you been a good little boy?”
Ugh.
Gag me with a Tootsie Roll…
Halloween brings out the best in us. It models what a Christian community should look like. We’re turned outward in joy towards our neighbors. Homes are decorated in a spirit of mischievous conviviality (though, yes, some tip too far into the perverse). Excitement fills the air. The least of these, the children, are the focal point of the night. And not just yours or mine in our private little Christmas party… But all children!
Halloween is more Christian than Christmas.
Christmas is based on exclusive gift-giving. On Halloween, gifts are given freely and joyously from stranger to stranger with no prompting other than the obligatory “Trick or treat!”
On Halloween, we mock death by dressing up as the undead. As my dear friend, theologian Joel Cruz, quipped, “In the light of Christ’s resurrection, mocking death is a natural and holy response.”
It’s a beautiful thing, those little zombies and demons running around.
During Christmas, we invite our personal favorite people into the confines of our home. But on Halloween, we’re out on front porches, stoops, and yards. Property lines are dissolved, and everyone is welcome everywhere (well, there are always those few who turn their lights off on Halloween, but they have their own stuff going on).
Segregated lines of race and class are shattered on Halloween. There’s compelling social science showing a big correlation between a community’s health and the extent to which it celebrates Halloween (see the book, ‘The Neighborhood Project’). When else do we see this kind of an intergenerational gathering of such joy?
What better way to honor the dead, celebrate the saints, and walk towards the darkest time of the year? What other holiday embodies with joy the ethos of “loving our neighbors as ourselves,” which Jesus calls to us every day?
The church universal goes all-in on Halloween. And to this, I say, hallelujah!
Actually, the candy refueling started when we got to school and lasted all day and night long…
But now I get to relive it through my daughter!
Though never one for slasher films…