For the last few years I have become more and more interested in ways in which the festival of Halloween might be redeemed. Today, while preparing for the 'Life & Faith discussion group' I came across some thoughts expressed in much more eloquent terms than my half-formed ideas:
Christmas… was deliberately superimposed on pagan midwinter festivals, [so] why not do the same with Halloween? After all, many consider that the feasts of All Hallows’ and All Saints’ were placed at their particular position in the year to ‘take over’ the Gaelic, end of Harvest festival, ‘Samhain’. Many consider that consumerism has done a pretty good job at reclaiming Christmas and is now seeking to take over All Hallows’, completely forgetting about All Saints’. Despite all of its confused messages, Christmas is still a brilliant outreach opportunity for the Church, and one that many of us take advantage of. Why don’t we see Halloween as an opportunity as well?
Tim Hastie-Smith, National Director of Scripture Union in England and Wales
I… remember my daughter asking some time ago why we dress up as scary characters at Halloween... again, it became an opportunity to talk about something spiritual. I explained that people dressed up as the things they feared as a way of stopping those fears having power over them. We talked about the way that fear has a way of paralysing you, if you try to ignore it and forget about it, and that facing your fears is the only way to remove their power over you. My daughter responded by saying that this was like prayer, that God can only help us if we talk to him, and that we can only be forgiven if we ask for it and admit the mistakes we have made.
Becky Sutcliffe
I am 6, at church, on Saturday afternoon, in my Halloween costume. We have acted out Bible stories about heroes and danger, followed throughout by an adult playing ‘Satan’ in devil horns, telling us God has forgotten us. We have shouted at him as we were ‘baptised,’ and watched him fall down. And now we sit in front of a flannel board filled with felt people.
“We are all different kinds of people,” my mother, the church’s children’s minister, tells us. “All colours and shapes and sizes. But we all have one thing in common.”
She takes down a figure and replaces it with a white cross. “Every one of us,” she says, “one day… will die.”
There is silence. “Is that the end of the story?” she asks.
When we finish, I’ll go home and, still dressed as a skeleton, go trick-or-treating with my dad. At 6, I could tell you that Halloween and All Saints’ are connected, and trick-or-treating is fun. A few years later, I can articulate that Halloween allows us to confront our fear of death, and All Saints’ Day reassures us that death is not the end. And now, as an adult, my childhood experiences with Halloween, All Saints’ and All Souls’ have instilled in me a deep belief that Halloween is a crucial part of the festival.
We can’t greet All Saints’ Day, with its promise of eternal life, without first confronting death. As the light fades and the leaves fall, the church year gives us a mini-Easter; Halloween is the mini-Good Friday. Jesus cannot triumph over death if we pretend death isn’t real. Halloween doesn’t introduce children to the fear of death – they already know about it. “Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist,” GK Chesterton said. “Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.”
“Is that the end of the story?” my mother asked. “NO!” we shouted. In the end, the graveyard is swept away, replaced by the kingdom. But the graveyard is real. If our children are going to hear the true gospel, we need to admit that much.
Margaret Pritchard Houston, Families Pastor at St George's Church in Campden Hill, London
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