Halloween Knows Your Name

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Halloween is an annual festival practiced in all the areas that are directly adjacent to this author’s house. Since this trend has remained unbroken for four years, it is now essentially a universal truth and therefore exists in all time and in all places. The topic is one deserving of considerably more attention. This is not a statement from any particular expertise, but on the assumption that any person reading this on the instawebs is probably an idiot.

Like many festivals and mythical events in the relatively modern, Christian tradition, Halloween descends to us from a different place; an older pagan festival. This is also true for Christmas, Easter, large portions of the Pentateuch and the Feast of the Assumption of Mary. Originally, this was the “Assumption of a Feast upon Mary” where the extant research suggests that the Holy Mother was eaten by a Balrog while crossing the Mines of Moria.

It’s important to know your theology, kids!

Halloween currently centers on these primary activities:

1. Finding children’s costumes that will not burn like a Mongolian Grill.
2. Candy
3. Vomit
4. Cleaning vomit
5. Hiding the candy
6. Complaining about Halloween

Items one through five are extremely common and need no explanation to anyone with children. Those who don’t have children should just ask someone who does and they will instantly narrate sixteen hours of stories about when their precious snowflake spewed high fructose corn syrup, USFDA Red Food Dye No. 40 and stomach bile across the living room and into the aquarium.

Maybe asking them is bad idea, in retrospect.

In a trend that is no doubt tied to global warming and the rising instances of melamine in Chinese milk, a growing chorus of very concerned Christians issue annual warnings to avoid Halloween because it is – to be blunt – an orgy of occultism and devil worship that just happens to be adorned with the occasional Zagnut bar.

This comes as a surprise to many who see Halloween rather differently; an orgy of stupid looking children lurching blindly about in ill-fitting masks and expensive costumes that are hidden under heavy autumnal outerwear. This can be honestly said (and often is) by persons who happen to the parents of human children. While there is no hard research to verify this, most parents cannot distinguish between a five-year-old in a Sleeping Beauty costume and the ghostly figure of diminutive, French-Canadian actress Geneviève Bujold.

Regardless, there are some very serious issues to be addressed by the concerned Christian community. Among these are:

1.Halloween is a real, sacred day for those who follow Wicca. /…/ There is no question in my mind that to those who believe and follow the practices of witchcraft, Halloween represents an opportunity to embrace the evil, devilish, dark side of the spiritual world.

This must come as a real shock to anyone who foolishly believed that Wiccans were all students of European history with a minor in Women’s Studies who feel compelled to add personal depth by seeming spiritual without adhering to a stifling, mainline religion. It was the considered opinion of this author that the greatest threat posed by Wicca was the chance that one of them might want to explain it.

2.Halloween is a holy day for pagans…and Satanists hold the day in the highest regard, performing special, often macabre ceremonies at the midnight hour.

As a personal aside, this is terribly nostalgic for me. I can recall as a youth that at the stroke of midnight on each Halloween my parents would wake me so I could explosively decompress the four hundred ‘treat-sized’ bags of Cheezy-Poofs that were threatening to breach the walls of my abdomen. What fun!

3.God’s people are to be a peculiar people

Mission accomplished!

As is evident in the following quotation, there is an alarming lack of consensus in the Christian ranks.

4. For Christians, the biggest fear of celebrating Halloween is the fear of practicing or participating in some type of cultic practice or demon worship. (I won’t get into, but these same people should not own Christmas trees if that is the case.). To me, Halloween is nothing more than good fun.

This degree of good sense is appalling. How can Christians become a ridiculous stereotype if they refuse to act as such? Sadly, for the status of contemporary Christianity, this frenzy of wild, greased-up, eschatologicaly driven madness common sense is apparently on the rise.

5. Thus, the festivities on All Hallow’s Eve were the Christian’s way of laughing at death and evil… not as a glorification of evil, but as a chance to affirm eternal life

A more careful look at the heading of the article clearly indicates that the level-headed author is an Episcopalian. In Christian circles, Episcopalians and Unitarians apparently don’t count.

6.It suggests our kids are missing out on something. And indeed they are, if we allow them to spend Halloween in celebration. If we are to train our children to be soldiers in the army of Christ, why would we sign a pass for them to go on leave when the battle is escalating on the front lines?

That’s much better. Not only does the quote have the mandatory condemnation of Halloween, but it also phrases the issue is stark terms of military tension, soldiers and battle. Such constructive language must, by inference, be the best way to raise healthy children unaffected by the mind-bending maelstrom of Halloween.

One can certainly see their point. In this day and age – knowing what we do – it would be dangerous to allow ourselves to be deluded by the strange mythology of a bygone era. There are likely very few people who still believe that insanity is caused by demonic possession, when a much more scientific explanation (messages beamed into your brain by the government) makes a great deal more sense.

Christian literalists, those who seem most likely to find Halloween offensive are right to warn us against superstition and engaging in hollow rituals that lead us down the road to ruin.

After all, they wouldn’t want to look stupid.

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Tags: episcopalians, fundamentalism, halloween, quotations, superstition, vomit