Holiday Hysteria (a Christian defense of Halloween)

Catholic Exchange ^ | October 31, 2008 | Rod Bennett

[NYer]

Today is Halloween — and, as you may have noticed, many of our Evangelical friends now shun America’s October spook festival altogether. They tell their children that Halloween is “the devil’s holiday” and that trick-or-treating is little better than dabbling with a Ouija board or consulting an astrologer.

Contemplating the Idea of Death

Though such extremism might seem odd or funny to many of us, it’s really, in one sense, quite admirable. If I thought Halloween was what they think it is, I’d keep my kids away from it, too — no matter how odd it might seem to others. But I’m afraid that if our separated brethren don’t stop for a moment and listen to some good old-fashioned Catholic wisdom on this subject, they’ll all be forced to become Jehovah’s Witnesses before long. And that, I think you’ll agree, would be terrible. Let’s try to spare them that fate, at least.

What exactly is Halloween all about?

Basically Halloween is our local manifestation of one of mankind’s oldest and most basic impulses: the impulse to contemplate — and even to celebrate — the idea of death during the fall of the year.

After all, the natural world itself dies in the autumn, and that death (along with our sure and certain hope of a glorious resurrection for it next spring) has always set human beings to contemplating their own impending date with mortality. The pre-Christian world was positively overflowing with these local death festivals. Whether it was the turning of the leaves along the Danube or the first frost on the haystacks of Burgundy, the pagans who lived in Europe before the coming of Christianity found something driving them to tell ghost stories around the end of October, to dress in creepy costumes, and to build bonfires against a new (and not entirely unpleasant) chill in the air. In some places, dances were held to drive away evil spirits; in others, it was believed that the shades of departed loved ones might take a holiday from Hades on this particular night, and could turn up at your doorstep for a spooky reunion.

Inculturation Is an Old Tradition

Before too long however, Catholic missionaries went to Europe from the East and preached the Gospel of Jesus to these cheery, superstitious heathens. Their fiery crusades against pagan idolatry are the stuff of legend: they inspired their converts to chop down the sacred groves, to smash their idols, and to turn instead to the worship of the one true God, Who created heaven and earth. But these missionaries had another quality as well, an attribute that’s often glossed over in hostile secular accounts. That attribute was empathy.

These early missionaries actually liked the people they were converting. They liked their folkways, and their culture. They liked their music, their dances, and even their local death festivals — or liked, at any rate, everything about them that could be liked without compromising the faith. Interestingly enough, we know from history that Pope Gregory sent his missionaries out with explicit instructions that anything in the local culture which was not actually incompatible with Christianity was to be left strictly alone. Today, we call this approach “missionary inculturation,” and most of us have realized that it isn’t really necessary for a Bantu tribesman to put on a three-piece suit before we allow him to come to church. We may feel very enlightened when we take this approach today, but the truth is that the whole evangelization of Western Europe (325-1100 AD) was accomplished under this principle.

This is the real reason why many Christian holy days correspond to older festivals from the pre-existing pagan calendar. The Europeans, for example, had many cherished family traditions surrounding their winter solstice festivals, and so the Church allowed them to incorporate many of these customs (Christmas trees, etc.) into her nativity celebrations. Likewise, Easter was already a spring holy day for the pagans, devoted to the contemplation of rebirth, new life, and resurrection. It was only natural, then, that many of these ancient customs found themselves gaining new and deeper significance under the reign of Christ, the true God of springtime and fertility.

The pagan death festivals were superceded in just this way by two Christian holy days based on a similar theme — All Saints Day (November 1) and All Souls Day (November 2). The pagans found it natural to remember their departed loved ones at this time of the year, and the Church wisely allowed them to maintain continuity with the old ways. To say, however, that the Church merely “Christianized” the existing paganism is to miss the point badly. As St. Paul dramatically points out in his Epistle to the Romans, paganism already had a good deal of inchoate truth in it already. What the Church actually did was to gather up some of these inchoate truths, sift out what was patently unusable, and then point the pagans to the final fulfillment of their ancient longings as revealed in the faith of Christ.

An Echo-Holiday

And yet Halloween isn’t quite All Saints Day, is it? Or All Souls Day. What is it then?

You might say that Halloween is an “echo-holiday.” Halloween is to All Saints & All Souls Days as Mardi Gras is to Ash Wednesday — sort of their outlaw second cousin. Halloween is that part of the ancient death festivals which couldn’t quite be comfortably domesticated. It’s the part that still wants to run wild on the autumn winds, to soap windows and overturn outhouses. And yes, like Mardi Gras, this urge is difficult decently to restrain at times; the sowing of wild oats often produces crops that have to be reaped by the whirlwind. But just because a thing is subject to abuse doesn’t mean the thing itself is evil — a principle that our Evangelical friends have sometimes forgotten when the subject was wine, and we ourselves have often needed to be reminded of when the subject was sex.

Yet it isn’t the puritanical aspect of Evangelicalism that causes me to worry about a possible descent towards the Jehovah’s Witnesses. It’s the knee-jerk response that Halloween is to be feared solely because it has “pagan origins.” The truth is that a good deal of what all of us do every day has pagan origins. The mathematics we use has pagan origins; our form of government has pagan origins; the very letters with which this sentence is written have pagan origins. In fact, most of the churches from which these anti-paganism sermons issue are, architecturally speaking, Greek revival temples in the “neo-classical style.” So “pagan origins” alone isn’t quite enough to damn Halloween all by itself. As a matter of fact, it’s one of the great glories of Christianity that it does save and redeem and baptize pagan things — ourselves included!

Jehovah’s Witnesses, on the other hand, profess to despise everything associated with our pre-Christian past. They especially despise the practices of the Catholic Church that redeem various elements of that pre-Christian past. They teach their disciples to hate and fear all holy days and holidays alike, and will have nothing to do with either Christmas or Easter for precisely the same reasons that Evangelicals are now despising Halloween.

And this is the reason I have found it worthwhile to mount, from time to time, a Christian defense of Halloween. Because one day — perhaps not too long from now — my own friends and relatives are going to feel forced, by their own careless presuppositions, to drop the other shoe on all holidays, to spend December without Christmas, and springtime without Easter, to go to a ballgame and refuse to sing the National Anthem.

If you find, as I do, that such a prospect makes your skin crawl a little, I hope you’ll join me tonight in soaping a few windows or turning over an outhouse or two. For truth’s sake.

Happy Halloween!

[Philo-Junius]

Being a good neighbour implies sociability, which doesn’t always get to be strictly on our own terms.

[trisham]

H’ween doesnt serve my faith or “religion” what so ever

*****************

I don't believe it serves mine, either. I also think it encourages beliefs that are anti-religion.

[TheGunny]

If Catholics are Christians why do you make such a big deal about your Catholicism? As thankful as you are for being “led by the Spirit there” and all...

Take for example my identity is in Christ, my Baptism is in Christ, Ive died in Christ, etc. The Catholic church cant do any of those things for you...whats your hang up with Christianity?

[TheGunny]

I disagree. What do you mean by “strictly on our own terms.”

[Philo-Junius]

Nobody made a big deal about Catholicism until the notion was advanced that a Catholic was out-of-bounds for offering a Christian defence of Hallowe’en from a Catholic point of view.

[djrakowski]

Excellent question - Catholicism is universal Christianity, and it is the Church in which the fullness of Christian truth subsists. I'm free from the pitfalls of private interpretation of scripture, I'm guided by 2000 years of consistent teachings on faith and morals, and most of all, I have the privilege of receiving Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. Why wouldn't I be thankful for being guided into the fullness of truth? I suspect anyone would be! One who's identity is fully shaped by Catholicism is also fully shaped by Jesus Christ. Thus, when a Catholic Christian identifies himself as a Catholic Christian, and fully accepts what the Church teaches about itself, then that person has identified fully with Christ. I have no hangup with Christianity. I'm a Christian. What's your hangup with Catholics claiming to be Christians?

[demshateGod]

Does your prayer kind of sound like this: I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican.

[AnAmericanMother]

Purgatory didn't worry the early Church Fathers or C.S. Lewis (he believed in it too) and it doesn't worry me. Lewis explains it better than I could:

I believe in Purgatory.

Mind you, the Reformers had good reasons for throwing doubt on the 'Romish doctrine concerning Purgatory' as that Romish doctrine had then become.....

The right view returns magnificently in Newman's DREAM. There, if I remember it rightly, the saved soul, at the very foot of the throne, begs to be taken away and cleansed. It cannot bear for a moment longer 'With its darkness to affront that light'. Religion has claimed Purgatory.

Our souls demand Purgatory, don't they? Would in not break the heart if God said to us, 'It is true, my son, that your breath smells and your rags drip with mud and slime, but we are charitable here and no one will upbraid you with these things, nor draw away from you. Enter into the joy'? Should we not reply, 'With submission, sir, and if there is no objection, I'd rather be cleaned first.' 'It may hurt, you know' - 'Even so, sir.'

I assume that the process of purification will normally involve suffering. Partly from tradition; partly because most real good that has been done me in this life has involved it. But I don't think the suffering is the purpose of the purgation. I can well believe that people neither much worse nor much better than I will suffer less than I or more. . . . The treatment given will be the one required, whether it hurts little or much.

My favorite image on this matter comes from the dentist's chair. I hope that when the tooth of life is drawn and I am 'coming round',' a voice will say, 'Rinse your mouth out with this.' This will be Purgatory. The rinsing may take longer than I can now imagine. The taste of this may be more fiery and astringent than my present sensibility could endure. But . . . it will [not] be disgusting and unhallowed."

- C.S.Lewis, Letters To Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, chapter 20

Viewed in this way, and not with some of the excesses that had grown up around the doctrine (thanks to Sister Mary Attila, Aunt Drusilla and their ilk, who meant well but were sometimes a little fuzzy on theology), it makes perfect sense.

I and my family are converts to Catholicism from the (shudder) Episcopal Church. I studied things pretty thoroughly before we converted.

[djrakowski]

No, it’s more like this: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

I was extolling the virtues of my CHURCH... not mySELF.

And sometimes my prayer sounds like this:

“Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name
thy kingdom come, thy will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven
give us this day our daily bread,
and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those
who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”

[djrakowski]

Lots of evangelicals love C.S. Lewis, so I wonder why more of them haven’t raised objections about his views on the subject of purgatory.

[AnAmericanMother]

A lot of times folks just read about C.S. Lewis and don't actually read what he wrote.

He also believed in the Real Presence.

Unusual for a man raised in Protestant Belfast . . . !

But you have to remember what his day job was -- professor of medieval and Renaissance literature. As his fellow countryman (and candidate for sainthood) John Cardinal Newman said, "to be deep in history is to become Catholic."

[djrakowski]

A lot of my closest evangelical friends (well, former closest friends - they dropped me like a hot potato when I converted) read nothing more of Lewis than Mere Christianity and the Chronicles of Narnia. But there’s so much more to read than those two, so it’s likely that they haven’t encountered his sacramental views.

“to be deep in history is to become Catholic” -> Amen, sister! I’ve also seen it quoted as this: “To be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant.” But the effect is the same nonetheless.

[demshateGod]

“’To be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant.’ But the effect is the same nonetheless.”

It’s vastly different. I’m not Catholic and I’m not protestant. Maybe Lewis meant all non-protestants were Catholics but if he did, he was flat wrong, and was reading the wrong history books.

[demshateGod]

“......and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those
who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
And thank you that I’m not a legalist, as one of those who read their Bible and sincerely attempt to apply to their life.”

[djrakowski]

If you’re not Catholic, and you’re not Protestant, does that make you Orthodox? I suspect the manner in which I quoted it leaves that possibility as well.

BTW, the quote was John Henry Cardinal Newman, not Lewis.

[AnAmericanMother]

Your version of the quote is correct. I should always verify my references!

[narses]

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[AnAmericanMother]

It was Newman, not Lewis. And I think where he was going with that is that a close reading of the history of the Church and a history of the Reformation is very enlightening.

[Philo-Junius]

"What do you mean by “strictly on our own terms.”

We have to engage the world in debate where we find it. An festival originally celebrated by pagans has been reinterpreted in the context of Christianity, and is now being transformed into a deracinated fancy-dress party with occult overtones. Christians need to confront this head-on, which means remembering from where the occult overtones came, which was a perfectly understandable and pro-Christian association of fall with the death of nature into winter, prefiguring Christ's death and rebirth in the Spring. This is the first problem with "Harvest festival" substitutes some evangelicals offer--the point of the holiday is not to congratulate ourselves on our good farming, it's to note that growth is ending, which in the past meant, for instance, the slaughter of all the yearlings not considered to be good breedstock. Fall is shot through with intimations of death, and the Christian needs to speak directly to that. Trying to change the subject is a dodge. Hallowe'en is associated with death, and with our fears about things which bring death. It is a common folkway for tribes to act out their fears, which in northern Europe involve either surrogate demons or counter-demons, dressed to frighten away the evil spirits. Now, most Christians are prepared to conceded the real existence of evil spirits, so, perhaps some might object under the principle of "speak of the devil and he will appear," but this isn't strictly scriptural is it? Once we understand why the costumes exist--to protect the village from those things represented by the costumes, we have to be much more sympathetic to the folk drama being acted out. Trick-or-treating is not really understood then as a sacrifice to evil spirits, but rather a gift made to those who dare to confront the evil spirits. Hallowe'en is too important to be left to children and materialists who want to sell them candy and costumes.

[netmilsmom]

>>It’s a shame Catholics haven’t been so historically broad-minded about the celebration of Jewish holidays as they have been the pagan ones.<<

We celebrate some Jewish Holidays.
In fact, back home we had a family that would come to our Christmas celebration and would send us Latkas for Hanukkah.

The first time the youngest daughter walked into my sister's house for Christmas, she said, “It's just like the Soap Operas!”

Those were the days......