Every year, I usually approach Halloween with a tiny bit of anxiety. This year is no exception. Most times, I'm racing around town at the last minute looking for vampire teeth, tiaras, and tootsie rolls. I worry if we have enough candy or if I bought too much. I'm usually trying to stuff a hotdog down every one's throat before they race off to collect candy. Most of the time, I'm still sewing bunny tails or painting on mustaches while kids are knocking on the door. But this year, I won't be doing any of that. I've had enough and our family has decided to take our Holy Day back.
As October rolled around, I realized that Halloween this year was on Saturday. Now that's a happy realization in our house, for several reasons. Payday is on Friday. This makes last minute candy buying ideal. Hiding candy is practically impossible with 6 children, 5 of whom can smell the chocolate cooking in Hershey. The only way to keep candy around here is to buy something gross like Circus Peanuts. But I digress. Saturday is always a good day for Halloween because, well it's Saturday. I imagined we could dedicate the whole day to Halloween activities. We could catch the parade in the morning, pick up a pumpkin at ½ price from the farmer's market, carve out a neat jack-o-lantern, order a pizza, get dressed up, take the little one's door to door, come home and separate the good candy from the bad, let the children eat more than 2 pieces of candy, throw the kids in the bath, and still have time to watch a movie. It was ideal. Until our mayor decided Saturday night trick-or-treating wasn't safe for the children.
Yep, you heard that right. In case you are wondering, all dangerous people and tricksters wait until the sun goes down on Saturday to engage in criminal activity. Saturday afternoon, the mayor figured, would hinder teenage trouble makers and potential pedophiles from frightening young children and their parents. Needless to say, parents across our fair town inundated the mayor's office with complaints. After all, in what universe is trick-or-treating at 3 PM any fun? Boca Raton, maybe. So the decision was made, by the powers that be, for Halloween to be moved to Thursday, October 29th.
Now normally, I don't give a hoot. I dress my kids up and off we go. But this year, it hit me like a ton of bricks. The mayor can't move Halloween. I can't move Halloween. Even the President can't move Halloween. Nobody can tell us when to celebrate it, remember it, or recognize it—it's a religious holiday. Now there, I said it. Halloween is a religious holiday and yet, somewhere along the way, some well-meaning people have forgotten that. Somehow this remarkable, joyous holiday got usurped by secular society. And for what it's worth, we Christians let it happen.
When I was a kid, Halloween was the greatest day ever. It was a different time then. Our parents didn't much care where we went or how long we were gone. They just wanted to sort through our candy when we got home so they could eat our chocolate. Every kid in the neighborhood knew all the best houses to go to. Costumes were no big deal, but everyone had one. I always ended up being a witch with one of those green plastic masks that looked like this. We'd all meet up at one central location and ride our bikes, if we had to, just to get Fizzies and Marathon bars. Trick or treating in those days was serious business. It wasn't for babies; it was for school-aged kids. Grandmas handed out homemade cookies and fudge. Parents went to parties. Teenagers went to baby-sit. It was harmless and it was fun. I grew up and never really thought much about Halloween as anything other than candy and ghost stories. But by the 80s, all that had changed.
I think the madness began with this little gem from 1978. Soon enough, the media started reporting about the "dangers" of Halloween, and the next thing you know, there were monsters lurking everywhere. Parents waited in panic for children to return home. They weren't looking through candy bags for the kids' best pieces of chocolate; they were looking for razor blades in the Sugar Daddies. Yuppie parents threw their kids candy apples in the garbage and begged their radiologist friends to x-ray anything left in the wrappers. Soon babysitters were forced to walk the neighborhoods with their charges and miss the one night of the year they could have their boyfriends over unsupervised. Parents quit going to parties and started hosting them instead. Haunted hayrides turned into The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Halloween morphed from the most fun night on the planet to the most dangerous day in the life of a child. Local churches only did what they thought was best. To fight the evil, they started having Fall Festivals. Kids flocked into church basements in Care Bear costumes so they could play games and eat cookies. Only the teenagers were left to gallivant around the streets, egging cars and rolling houses.
In the two decades (yes, I said 20 years), the general idea of a safe Halloween hasn't changed all that much, but the trick-or-treating stuff definitely has. Trick-or-Treat Night is firmly entrenched in American culture and there are now some general rules. There can be no trick-or-treating on Friday or Sunday nights. Friday night is for high school football. Trick-or-treating on Sunday is sacrilegious. A baby's first Halloween is a social milestone. Candy is so, well, passé. Pre-packaged fruit slices, school supplies, and kid-sized toothpaste are the choices of modern families. Not to be outdone, more and more churches are offering this as an alternative. In spite of these efforts by Christians, Halloween has lost all its real significance and has become one big giant costume contest. Parents spend months looking for the perfect costume that accentuates their infant's/toddler's/preschooler's cuteness. This was a best seller last year. What that has do with Halloween, I've yet to discover. In fact, I can't figure out what trick-or-treating and candy even have to do with Halloween. Somebody has capitalized on OUR Holiday and I think it's high time we take it back. I suppose, though, before Christians can actually take it back, they must realize why we celebrate it in the first place.
The early Christian church sprang from Judaism. As such, Christianity and Judaism share similar texts and beliefs. One of those beliefs is life after death. Well before the life of Jesus, Jewish rabbis were already teaching about the afterlife and the purification of souls. The Biblical book of 2 Maccabees offers a glimpse of the practices and beliefs of the Jewish people at that time. These beliefs remain an important part of Jewish faith. Early Christians, who were Jews of varying sects, brought these ideas of the afterlife with them as the Church developed. The tradition in the early Church included the belief that, for a time, souls went to a place for purification before they entered into eternity with Our Lord. Those Christians who live lives of virtue and charity will go on after death to share in the Beatific Vision—the face of God. The Church, through the ages, has referred to these men and women as Saints. There are plenty that we know by name and others that have died without their names ever being known. The communion of saints, as recited in the Apostle's Creed, refers to these saints in heaven, but also the saints waiting purification in Purgatory and the believers here on earth. With these beliefs as foundation, the early Christians began setting aside days of the year to pray for those, both known and unknown, who had died in martyrdom. As the Church grew in size and spread throughout the Roman Empire, it became clear that their needed to be one day set aside in the Church to recognize and prayer for the saints. In 610, Pope Boniface did just that by proclaiming May 13 as the Feast of All Holy Martyrs. It is unclear why the feast day was moved, but in 835 Pope Gregory IV moved the date to November 1 and proclaimed the day as All Saints Day. Traditionally, Feast Days were often celebrated as vigils, or in the evening. Thus, All Saints Day became commonly known as All Hallows Eve, or Halloween.
Under ordinary circumstances, this is where the story of Halloween would end. But since the Church has always been a mission Church, some things unexpected often happen. The Church in those times had the conversion of the whole known world as her goal. As missionaries moved into the corners of the world, they often faced groups of people who had long established belief systems and rituals. This was exactly the case as the Church began moving into the land of the Celts—not these Celtics, but these Celtics. The Celtic Pagans had many rituals, celebrations, and festivals to recognize their gods. One of the most significant festivals, Samhain, took place around the same time of year. Samhain (pronounced Sah-win) means "summer's end." The Pagans believed that on this day the boundaries between the world of the living and the world of the dead became very thin, thus making it possible for the dead to return. They marked this time of year with bonfires, dancing, and dressing in disguises. This fascination with the dead was firmly entrenched in Celtic culture and it became quite difficult for Christian missionaries to explain the Mysteries of the Church. Rather than risk losing the souls of the Celts, the Church instituted sound doctrine and tradition, but allowed some practice of Pagan customs to ease the adjustment period. As Christianity spread, however, these old ways eventually lost their meaning and these practices died out. What remained, instead, was the knowledge and practice that just souls who believe in the Resurrection need not fear death. Unfortunately, Halloween was doomed, if you will, shortly after the Protestant Reformation.
Martin Luther, as is well known, rejected many of the traditions and some of the Scriptures that the Christian Church held as Truth. One of the ideas he rejected was the idea of Purgatory and prayers for the dead. As a result, the church that grew out of his movement could only recognize the Feast of All Souls as a memorial for those in heaven and those left on earth. Any real significance of the Holiday was lost long before these Christians began to settle in the New World. As a result, most of the early Americans had little understanding of the importance of All Saints Day. How, then, has Halloween returned to the celebration that it is today? There are lots of rumors that the Irish Catholics brought these traditions when they settled in the Northeast. There are also rumors about Satanists and Witches in the first colonies. Most of these stories are unfounded. More than likely the idea of trick-or-treating on Halloween has more to do with poverty than sorcery. In the 1930s, children in larger cities often dressed in disguise around the Thanksgiving Holidays and begged for food. They stood around pastry shops and candy stores, in particular. Probably because many Catholic families in the East were celebrating Masses on Halloween, that night became a particularly easy evening to beg for food. Since most Americans were unfamiliar with the theology behind the celebrations, post WWII America was able to capitalize on the idea. By the 1950s, Walt Disney, the Hershey Co., and a host of other kid-focused companies had found a market. Trick-or-Treating soon became fully recognized by adults and children as an American Holiday. Inevitably though, as all religious significance was stripped away, Halloween is becoming more focused on the macabre and the supernatural. In many ways the festival has returned to its Pagan roots, where there is more focus on the actions of the dead than on the actions of the living. The real meaning of the day—that upon death, just souls will share in the Vision of Our Lord—is lost.
As All Saints Day draws closer, I would like to end with this prayer.
O my Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of Hell, lead all souls to Heaven, especially those in most need of Thy mercy.
Amen.
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