Halloween: Christian origins and secular culture
Halloween in the hands of secular culture has been almost completely severed from its Christian origins as the eve of All Saints.
FIELD NOTES
By Rev. Allie McDougall
THE DISCONNECT between Christian holy days and their secular analogs grows sharper with each passing year.
The commercialization of Christmas and progressive erasure of Easter are the classic examples of this dynamic, but as we draw nearer to the spooky 31 days of October, I am struck by the chasm between the actual culture of death and grief, the wisdom of the Church and its traditions of death, and the entertainment derived from the cultural celebration of Halloween.
The disruption of the processes of death, dying, and grief was one of the greatest losses of the pandemic. People died alone, without closure or comfort from loved ones. Funerals were cancelled or dramatically postponed, reduced to five and ten person gatherings, socially distanced, masked, and voided of the many comforting rituals that typically accompany funerals. Here in the aftermath, I have noticed through parish ministry that the practices of death and grieving have not been restored. Private graveside committals with direct cremation and limited involvement of faith communities are becoming steadily popular, even among the most committed and active parishioners.
Death is inconvenient, messy, and emotionally wrought and what the pandemic revealed is that we can opt out the aspects of dying that make us, as loved ones and supporters, feel uncomfortable. Death has been sanitized, minimized, and streamlined for the sake of efficiency, but to the detriment of a healthy grieving process and the Christian conception of what it means to die well and receive the crown of everlasting life, in hope of the Resurrection.
The Triduum of the Dead, Allhallowtide, the time surrounding our feast of All Saints enshrines the remembrance of death and resurrection into the pattern of the Christian year. In the three days of All Hallows’ Eve, All Saints Day, and All Souls Day, we make space for all the emotion and complexity that accompany death. Fear, anxiety, sadness, loss, remembrance, hope, and celebration are all encompassed in those three days.
It is rightly known as the Triduum of the Dead because, very much like the Paschal Triduum, we travel through the process of death, its defeat, and the promise of resurrection as it applies to human life. As Christ passed into death and triumphed over it by being raised to new life, so will the Christian soul.
Taking this time to remember one’s own death, to give thanks for the saints who have gone before, and to remember all whom we love who have died in the Lord is a spiritually powerful action. It reorients us toward the reality of life and death and gives us a context for offering our sorrow back to God. We can peer into and contemplate the darkness of our existence, then allow the light of Christ to shine upon it. A fulsome celebration of this festival season is truly remarkable and should be explored more by parishes!
Halloween in the hands of secular culture has been almost completely severed from its Christian origins as the eve of All Saints. Some Christians have even taken it upon themselves to totally repudiate and reject Halloween as being evil, the work of Satan, and contrary to the Christian life.
As a Halloween fan, horror movie connoisseur, and priest this saddens me. Halloween is one of the most direct points of connection that the Church can make with the broader culture about death. While we are broadly uncomfortable and avoidant about death as we experience it, countless others are perfectly fine to enjoy the symbolism, aesthetics, and media about death popularized through Halloween. Gothic, spooky subculture is an accessible, even playful way for people to engage with challenging, frightening themes. The most beloved horror stories and imagery of this season are often metaphors and fables for the horrific or painful realities of the real world. People are drawn to them, as they are to other forms of meaning-making, to process and find catharsis for what they bear in real world.
In the Triduum of the Dead, the Church has an entire set of ritual actions and traditions that can take cultural engagement with death from the realm of entertainment to spiritual enrichment, openness to death conversations, and maybe even healing for the pain of grief and loss.
Taking ownership of our theologies and traditions of death as the Christian Church is not morbid or pessimistic but honest and refreshing, particularly as the culture of grief and death is condensed and sanitized. Christianity has always been a little bit spooky – the Lord whom we serve personally and totally defeated the forces of death and evil and burst open the gates of eternal life to all people. As our world walks a tightrope between denying and hiding death in the real world and playing with its symbolism during the Halloween season, it’s worth making our perspective known.
Rev. Allie McDougall is the Vicar of St. Paul's and St. Stephen's, Stratford.