Halloween is such a night of parental pressure! What happened? We blinked and the suburb filled with vampires! Now our kids want to suck peoples’ blood. Let’s wrap our heads around Halloween. Normally St John’s holds a Light Night on Halloween. COVID has squashed us this year, but we’ll be back next year. Let’s think for this week though, from a Christian mindset.
Halloween is Not All Bad.
It is great to see local communities get out together and have a laugh. We all love a good costume. And if you give me a free lolly I’m your friend for life. Our communities embrace of Halloween has a little to do with peer-pressure, a little desire for an early Christmas, and a big desire for common parties in the absence of something like….well, church. So Halloween is not all bad. Community is a God-given good, and community festivals celebrate this without even realising it.
Halloween is Not All Good
Some of the community, however, find this all a little strange. Little ones find it hard to laugh when they feel all afraid. Costumes can be so good that they scare the pants off me too. (I have worn a costume with a religious overtone that had Orthodox members of the suburb wanting to string me up from a light post.) There’s just the darn pressure of working out how much to buy into it with your kids. There are a dozen things to object too and little energy to do it. And the message is unclear - are we messing around with death? Celebrating evil? Promoting Freddy Kruger? Teenagers dressed in Scream masks walking among tiny tots is a little much for most of us. So Halloween is not all good.
Halloween is Not All-American
One of the objections to Halloween is it is American. We like lots of American things - who doesn’t love a cheeseburger - but people are divided on this. Let’s work out where it came from and what it really is.
In truth, Halloween started as a Celtic pagan festival (‘Samhain’) which was held to ward off ghosts. This was the scared-at-spirits kind of thing that Christians always found sad, as Christians around the world always lose their fear of evil spirits.
So a Pope in Italy had a good idea (it happens!) and in around 830AD declared the victory of Jesus over evil and death by starting All Hallows Eve and All Hallows Day. ‘Hallows’ are Christians – friends of God. When Christians remember that our much-loved friends who have died in Jesus are safe with Jesus, this is a big deal for us and helps us ‘not grieve like people who have no hope’ (1 Thessalonians 4:13). So people dressed up originally to scare off death and evil, but if Christians dress up they should do so to laugh at death!
So, Halloween is originally Celtic-pagan, it became Catholic-Christian. America got in with some harvest overtones and added a pumpkin overlay. So there is no doubt that we are getting it imported from the U.S., but Halloween is not All-American.
Halloween and Jesus
Halloween is an opportunity for Jesus’ news. Jesus had a way of showing up in confusion, not walking away. I think the news we can bring is to laugh at the vampire/mummy/horror mask. We can do this by not putting so much of it in little ones’ faces - and we have an idea for this below. But I wish we were all poking fun at death and darkness – because Jesus’ rising from the dead means we can laugh: ‘Death, where is your sting?’ (1 Cor 15:55) For interest’s sake - the only person who couldn’t laugh at death in Harry Potter was a guy with a Latin name called Voldemort (Volde = fear; Mort = death). He was so freaked out by death he was humourless and had to falsely prolong his life with magic like someone in Maroubra on radical health supplements. Christians just always have been best-prepared to cope with death.
So you might do a number of things with Halloween.
Lead your kids to be in the middle of community events and work out the Jesus opportunity. You might go along - be prepared. you might organise something - your faith might make you a little community leader! my experience is other parents are relieved when Christians do the things that they know are better for their kids too, and are happy to receive the benefit. How to be ready - 1 Peter 3:16 - ‘always be prepared to give an answer for the hope you have’. Here it is: “Some of this is scary for my kids, but I’m so stoked that being Christian means I can make the scariest things (even death) less scary for my kids. It’s a pretty hope-filled thing for me.”
Lead your kids away from the excess of it. You can come to, or help run, Light Night at church (next year) where we point out the light and life of Jesus in the middle of all dark and scary things.
I hope this might have helped you think meaningfully about Halloween. By a mile. Thank all the little vampires for leading us to Jesus again. Praise God.
What is Light Night?
Come to church some time between 4 and 6pm.
Follow the ‘light trail’ with your kids (fairy lights)
They will receive
a quick face-paint
some decent food
a lovely craft
a little kids talk about how Jesus calms our fears
a light-night lantern
a jump on the trampoline
And then they can go home to bed and sleep happy, tight, and full of Jesus’ light.