Keep Death in Halloween
Halloween sure comes at the right time of year, doesn’t it? Just as all nature around us starts dying and trees look skeletal and spiders get big and the dark settles in early and the cold creeps in to remind us that winter is coming, we celebrate a holiday of death. Halloween encompasses more than that now, but death is really the original focus. And it should be.
That’s because Halloween is the eve of All Saints Day. “Halloween” is from the Scottish contraction of “All Hallows’ Eve,” another way to say All Saints’ Evening. November 1 in the Christian liturgical calendar is the day we celebrate all the saints (Catholic) or all the Christians in general (Protestant) who have gone on to heaven. In some churches, the names of all who have died the previous year are read aloud and honored on the Sunday after Halloween. In many countries, people go to cemeteries to decorate graves or have special meals to honor their dead family members. The Mexican Day of the Dead, which we may be familiar with from Spanish class or Pixar’s Coco, starts on November 1.
Somewhere along the way, other elements got mixed in that lean toward the macabre and demonic. This made many parents uncomfortable with Halloween, but community efforts to make Halloween safe and fun gathered momentum over the past couple of decades. Churches, especially, initiated a sort of redemption of the holiday with Trunk or Treat.
But I maintain that any desire to take the death out of Halloween is misguided. We can try to keep the occult and the demonic out of the holiday, but instead of shying away from anything related to death, why don’t we reinitiate the honoring of our dead the following day or following Sunday? It’s a lovely idea to light candles at home and set up pictures of ancestors and family members who have recently died. This can be the chance to tell our kids family stories about these relatives, stories that knit the kids closer to their families and make them more resilient people (research proves this).
And I think it’s perfectly fine to precede this day of remembering the dead with a fun and spooky night for the kids. God likes parties and festivals and instituted many in scripture. These are good for the soul and the spirit and for creating community. And why not celebrate, when we know these people are celebrating in heaven? Death is part of life, but because of the resurrection of Jesus, death has no power anymore. This is a time to demonstrate that to our kids, with candy and family and friends and fun.
