Keep "Hallow" in Halloween!

Now, that’s a bumper sticker I want to see, and I wouldn’t be shy about displaying it this time of year on the posterior of the family minivan, the anterior of which is lovingly adorned with the ubiquitous rearview mirror rosary, the middle of which is filled with any number of giggling be-costumed children, usually our own.  The secular culture –as well as many Catholics, it seems—has forgotten that All Hallows’ Eve is a night of merriment prior to the feast of All Saints/Hallows Day on November 1^st.  I think it’s time to start reminding ourselves and our children.  Ironically, worrying that Halloween was a “pagan” celebration is allowing it to turn into one.

Many local Christian cultures throughout the ages have gone door-to-door for treats on the eve of various Christian feasts, not only Halloween.  But it has been fashionable for some time to claim that Christianity placed the feast of All Saints on November 1^st in order to co-opt the Druidic celebration of Samhain, which involved dressing in costume and going door-to-door.  It is less fashionable to point out that there was no reason to do this because All Saints Day for the entire Church was declared by Pope Gregory sometime in the early 700s, three centuries after Ireland had already been thoroughly converted by Saint Patrick.  There was no need to sneak Christianity in the back door; it had long since been let in through the front.  But regardless of history, every Halloween, Catholic blogs are peppered here and there with comments likening the practice of trick-or-treating to cooperating with the pervasive “culture of death,” and/or reveling in pagan practices, and urging us to close our curtains and pretend we’re not home on this supposed evening of satanic worship.  I understand where the hand-wringing comes from; as Christians, we are called to do everything with Christ in view, and we wonder how He can fit into this oversexed and black picture painted for us by countless fly-by-night costume stores that sprout up every September.  I see a clue in one of my favorite hymns, which was just recently played at a colleague’s memorial service:

I danced on a Friday when the world turned black 
It's hard to dance with the devil on your back 
They buried my body, they thought I was gone 
But I am the dance, and the dance goes on 

Dance, dance, wherever you may be 
I am the lord of the dance, said he 
And I lead you all, wherever you may be 
And I lead you all in the dance, said he 

They cut me down and I leapt up high 
I am the life that will never, never die 
I'll live in you if you'll live in me 
I am the Lord of the dance, said he 

Christ is not just joy, He is absolute bliss, even dancing out of death.  And, all of the saints in the canon, whom we celebrate on November 1^st now live in this bliss as they followed our Lord's lead in the great dance.  Most importantly, these were just flawed, regular people like you and I!  Some of them were even more irascible than I can be.  (A FEW, my husband reminds me.)  Because Jesus died, rose and opened the gates to heaven, we can actually hope and strive to be there ourselves someday.  If that isn’t reason enough to laugh at sting-less death, to stick it in the devil’s eye, and to eat tons and tons of candy, I don’t know what is.

Are there certain practices of the secular version of our holiday we should not assimilate?  Sure.  When the choices your 7-year-old has for costumes at iParty are “Sexy Police Officer,” “Sexy Maid,” “Sexy Igor” (?), “Sexy Vampire,” and “Sexy Undertaker,” you might Catholically consider turning to an ancient Druidic practice after all:  Making Your Own Costume.  Some Catholic families dress up as saints for Halloween, which can be a helpful practice for tying the festivities of Hallows’ Eve in with the actual holiday it anticipates, All Saints Day.  But, as long as we don’t sink into the deeply disturbing macabre, a veneration of gore itself and the antithesis of true Hallows’ Eve, I also see nothing wrong with allowing children to dress up as ghosts and goblins and go “boo!” at each other in mockery of “all the evil spirits who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls” (Prayer to St. Michael).  As long as we dance the Lord’s dance they can’t touch us in the end.  Speaking of Saint Michael, even he mocks the devil by his very name, a rhetorical and almost sarcastic question as he closes the gates of hell on him, “Who is like God?”  Seriously, Satan?  You close the curtains and pretend you aren’t home.  More candy for us.