My thoughts on October 31st

Every fall, after Labor Day and before Thanksgiving, I can feel the knot forming in my stomach and that anxious feeling in my chest that lasts for the entire month or six weeks preceding the 31st of October. The anxiety comes from the old, "What to do about Halloween?" question. I know many people, especially many Christian people, have fought this battle out in their minds. The breadth of conclusions people draw is striking: conclusions ranging from "I love Halloween and I can't wait to put on my green witch costume and dress up my five-year-old as the grim reaper and my toddler as an adorable little ghost with an axe sticking out of his back" to "We absolutely do not celebrate Halloween in any form at all." Most of the conclusions drawn, however, lie somewhere in the middle. (see note)

I have felt this struggle in my heart and mind from the first October after my first son was born. (Actually, I felt it when I was small too, but somewhere in between high school and parenthood it really didn't seem to be an issue--but now the issue is back in full force.) So he is now 7 and I think we must have dealt with Halloween 7 different ways. The first year he dressed up as a brown bear and we went to our church's "Reformation Day" festival. The second year I don't remember what we did. The third year he was a fluffy white chicken and his baby sister was the bear and we went to one person's house (my husband's godparents) "trick-or-treating". The fourth year my cute little cowboy and cowgirl went to the Harvest Party at church and we passed out candy at our house on Halloween but didn't go trick-or-treating ourselves. There was a sign on our door that said "Please no scary costumes...we have small children." The fifth year we had a football player and fairy princess go to the Harvest Party at church and we drove a full two hours to Washington, DC, on the 31st to go to Ikea so that we would get back well after any trick-or-treaters should be in bed and we could just avoid the whole evening altogether. Last year, praise the Lord, we were traveling that day and just flat didn't have to deal with it. Now there is this year, and I have given serious thought to little else since the blow-up, ghost-rising jack-o-lantern first appeared at Wal-mart.

I have always wanted to write out all of my thoughts on Halloween and every year I think I should write a blog post about it. I didn't have a blog before though, so I just fumed silently or to a few friends and wished the month of October away like the years before. But this year, I'm almost getting angry about it. GOD MADE OCTOBER and I don't want to wish it away any more. Truly one of the most beautiful months of the year (we recently moved from near the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia which is arguably one of the most spectacularly beautiful places on earth in the fall), I love October. I love the change in weather, I love the brisk wind, I love standing outside catching and watching my kids jump in piles of leaves, I love football season, I love chili, and I love thinking about building that first fire of the season in the fireplace. All of those are good gifts that God has given me, but I feel like the pall of Halloween just overshadows all of it until November 1 finally arrives in all of its Thanksgiving glory--now there's a holiday worth celebrating.

Which brings me back to my question. Why do we celebrate Halloween? Why DO we? When Joshua and the Israelites had crossed over the River Jordan into the promised land, God told them to erect stones of remembrance. When their children asked them what the stones were for, they were to tell them about how God and saved them from the hand of the Egyptians, how he was with them throughout their wandering in the desert, and how he was faithful to his promise to bring them to the Promised Land. Holidays for me are kind of like stones of remembrance. If there is a special day that we celebrate, and my children ask me why, I can tell them: at Christmas we celebrate the birth of Jesus, at Easter we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, on the Fourth of July we celebrate the freedoms that we share in our nation as a result of God's blessing, on Labor Day we celebrate the fact that God has given us able bodies and smart minds and great opportunities to build, and work, and plant, and reap, and clean, and care for each other and the beautiful world he has given us. All of the holidays we celebrate, there is a reason. With Halloween, I'm left with, it's just fun I guess, to dress up and get candy from the neighbors' houses. But really, it has nothing to do with God.

In actuality, it has everything to do with not God. I realize that a lot of things we do at certain holidays have pagan origins. Eggs at Easter, Holly at Christmas, etc. But I would say that on the whole, most of these holidays, in a Christian home, have an overtly Christian overtone. In a sense, they have been redeemed, and it is still God who gets the glory on these days. Ask most any child, Christian or not, what Christmas is, and they will tell you it is Jesus' birthday. Halloween, however, has strictly pagan roots (I'll spare the details, you can google that yourself) and has never really grown away from them. Most things Halloween have something to do with evil. Ghosts, witches, goblins, skeletons, monsters, bloody people--none are images that bring glory to God. If you ask a child what Halloween is, I can all but guarantee you God will not find His way into their answer. It's the scary day, the day we have witches and ghosts and goblins and get to go trick-or-treating. My 7-year-old told me last week that he had "learned" at school that actually, 2000 years ago, ghosts WERE real, and that people used to put on masks and go to people's houses and get treats so that the ghosts wouldn't kill them. (and we celebrate this and mimic this, why?) It took a while for my jaw to inch back up to it's normal position.

Some things you just can't stamp "Holy" on and make it so. Halloween is one of those things. Oh but people try. "It's such a good opportunity to meet your neighbors--most of the year we never see them, but on that night we do and it is so much fun!" Maybe my neighborhood is different, but every time there is a birthday party we see each other. We see each other shoveling snow in the driveway, we see each other raking the front yard, we see each other going to get the mail, we see each other in the aisle at Kroger. Really? We need to celebrate Halloween to see our neighbors?

"Oh, well, we just go to our church's Harvest Party". Then why dress up? If it is truly a harvest party, why is there so precious little to do with Apple Pie and Pumpkin Muffins, and everything to do with dressing up and getting candy? It is just Halloween at church. My kids love dressing up. My five-year-old princess is rarely without her tiara and Saturday morning she and Mr. Football-Player-with-the-batman-cape watched cartoons all morning. Don't get me wrong, we love dress up. But to me dressing up on Halloween is nothing more or less than what was going on "2000 years ago when ghosts were real" and they didn't want to get killed. I'm sure Satan is having a good laugh at how much we love Halloween.

The other day I was cleaning my house and having my annual Halloween silent fume session, and the story of Adam and Eve in the garden came to mind. Here's the story (from the NIV with some parts skipped for the sake of brevity):

Now the LORD God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. The LORD God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. And the LORD God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”

Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”

The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”

“You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. But the LORD God called to the man, “Where are you?”

Then the LORD God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?”

The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”

Is it possible that Halloween is like that Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil? The serpent is whispering in our ear, "Did God really say you can't celebrate ANY holiday? You can't have fun? Even just a little bit?" And then, like Eve, we see that Halloween is pleasing to our sense of comfort in not being unlike the world and good for hanging out with neighbors, and we take and touch and eat. And then we not only eat it ourselves, but we give it to our children and neighbors so they can have some too?

I get depressed just thinking of it.

(Note: One particular school of thought is that Christians should observe Halloween as a way to celebrate victory over death and evil.  My thoughts on that idea can be found here.)