Halloween, the Christian Holiday

We talked about this week before last, but I wanted this on the blog too, especially for folks who weren't there.

I think Halloween has the potential to be an incredibly effective, meaningful, and joyous Christian festival. Now, most of the times when you read a statement like that, the proponent is imagining re-styling Halloween into some kind of "Fall Festival", scrubbing it clean of all ghost stories or anything scary, and maybe using it as some kind of "morality tale:" a variation on the Christmas-time song "you better watch out."

That's not what I'm advocating. I think that there is a great Christian witness in sitting in a dark room and telling ghost stories. I think there is something more than morality to be gotten from October 31. (Not that there isn't morality there: just look at any pre-Scream horror movie and watch who gets massacred first, and who makes it through.)

Halloween, more than any other festival, is about story-telling. Christmas is a close second. The whole point of Halloween is the story. Even costumes allow people to live out a story, be it Princess or Living Dead.

The Bible is many things, but one thing that is prevalent throughout is the idea of storytelling: parables, histories, tales like Job, even many of the Psalms.

Halloween, more than any other festival, is about overcoming fear. The idea behind a scary story, scary costume, or haunted house is the idea that there is an end to it. You get scared, and then you get out. Even the monsters, like Frankenstein's monster, Dracula and the werewolf have weaknesses that the brave and smart can exploit: fire, wooden stakes, and silver bullets, among others. (In fact, for vampires, there are so many rules -- sunlight, stakes, garlic, crosses, holy water, etc. -- that it's hard sometimes to figure out why they are so fearsome. In some stories, vampires cannot even enter a building uninvited.)

Christianity is, more than anything else, about overcoming fear. Love not fear, it says at the top of this page. Trust in God. The church's one foundation. Building your house on a rock so you don't fear.

Halloween reduces the satanic forces of the earth to little devil horns worn by six-year-old kids, or pyrotechnic rock shows with disgusting special effects. It's about not being afraid of evil, the devil, or whatever. It's about taking these things seriously, but facing them with your friends, knowing that they'll come to an end. That sounds like Christianity to me.

Now don't get me wrong. Halloween isn't everyone's cup of tea. Some people have a real aversion to the kind of thrills that Halloween thrives on. They don't have to do it. They can treat October 31 like any other day, just as many good Christians dislike the Christmas season for one reason or other, or stay at home during Sunrise Services on Easter.

Also, I realize that Halloween does not have Biblical roots like Easter, Pentecost, or Christmas, at least in that we don't have anybody in the Bible putting on latex Ceaser masks and telling ghost stories. Still, we've found Christian messages in many non-biblical holidays (Mother's Day, for example).

So, here's the deal. If you don't like Halloween for whatever reason, fine. But don't ruin it for the rest of us Christians.