One quick trip to Walmart confirms what I already know: I’m in the minority when it comes to Halloween.
I hate it.
In the court of American culture, the majority opinion rules in favor of Halloween, crowning it as our second biggest commercial holiday. Without question, Halloween is a huge celebration involving candy, costumes, games, festivities and “harmless” dabbling into the shadier corners of this universe.
You can google endless statistics to support this: one-fourth of all candy sold in the US is at Halloween – over 600 million pounds. Americans spend about $9 billion annually for this one day—about $3.2 billion on costumes alone. What began in ancient Ireland is now celebrated in about two dozen countries and territories around the world.
An evening of guiltless ghoulishness and gluttony. What’s so bad about that?
“Chickin’ In”
Granted, I may not be the proper person to represent this minority opinion. Afterall, I’ve always been a wimp when it comes to scary movies, haunted houses, ghost stories and things that go bump in the night. As a kid, I cried when Lassie didn’t return home fast enough in each episode, and as a teen I’d break into a cold sweat whenever I had to climb up into the barn haymow after dark.
Even as an adult, I’ve had my nights of turning on extra lights after watching a spooky movie or reading an eerie story. And I’ll never explore—not even on the internet in bright daylight—the “10 Most Haunted Houses in the U.S.” Never, never, never.
Nonetheless, why such a chicken-livered view of this silly adolescent holiday?
No Laughing Matter
Ever since I was a child, I was taught that this world is a battlefield between good and evil. In one corner of the ring is God, who created the world and loves it very much. In the other corner is the Devil. Even our English name for him contains “evil.” He hates us and wants to destroy all creation.
For me, the battle between good and evil is real. It’s not a joke. Winner takes all.
So the idea of winking at evil, even for one night, is a mystery to me.
Calling evil “entertaining” and “festive” is unfathomable. I just returned from a two-day emergency nurse conference in South St. Paul, where the hot topics included escalating workplace violence, the unmanageable war on synthetic opioids, and the increasing number of pediatric suicides. Pre-teen and teen suicide rates continue to climb. Yes. Pre-teen – as young as 8 and 9 years old. Although statistics are hard to find for that young age group, in 2017, suicide was the second-leading cause of death among adolescents and young adults ages 15-24.
As nurses, we work so hard to battle those demons and so, so many others like them. It’s a little hard for me, therefore, to look at the painted, tortured face of a tweener zombie standing at my door and say, “My, my, aren’t you cute?”
Frightening Those Who Don’t Want to Participate
The second reason I despise the magnitude of Halloween in our sugar-buzzed society is because it doesn’t allow people to opt out. It hangs around all of us like a low cloud of toxic gas.
Years ago I worked in a local nursing home, and every October the place was decked out with colorful wall hangings, corner displays and table settings. That is, until the year “Nora” was admitted. At first, we couldn’t figure out her change in behavior. She had dementia, of course, but her teariness, her anxious gestures, and her reluctance to go down the hallway to activities happened so suddenly.
Then it hit us – poor Nora was terrified by the ghosts and witches up on the walls that stared down at her in her wheelchair. In her own little world, which grew darker and stranger every day, she couldn’t separate the spooky decorations from the spooks in her mind.
Not all “Nora’s” live in nursing homes. Many people right around us carry their own haunted memories and mental health challenges. For them, Halloween is an endurance event as they try to avoid occult decorations, scary outdoor displays, ghosts and goblins parading from house to house, and the endless procession of horror shows on TV. (Even if you avoid the shows, chances are you will be screen-slapped by the promotional ads for them.)
Lipstick on a Pig
Back in my pre-nursing days, I worked a few years as a writer in the Minnesota House of Representatives. One of the legislators I admired was fond of saying, “Never try to make a bad bill better.” If a bill was a bad idea, the proper action was to defeat it and replace it (if necessary) with a bill that contained the right idea. Trying to “fix” the bad bill with amendments rarely made it a good bill; however, it obligated the representatives who made the amendments to support the bill—good, bad or otherwise.
Or, like my Dad used to say, “It’s like putting lipstick on a pig.” It’s still a pig.
Throughout the centuries, Christians and “enlightened societies” are recorded chasing after the dark Halloween celebrations with very large tubes of lipstick. The history of Halloween goes back over 2,000 years to ancient Celtic harvest festivals, complete with roving ghosts and druid sacrifices. Not long after that, history picks up the long successions of rational Romans, educated Europeans, Catholic Popes, New England Protestants—and so on and so on—each attempting to improve on the holiday by removing “the bad stuff” and adding their good celebrations and traditions to it.
Just like fixing a bad legislative bill.
Even today we continue to pin pretty ribbons on this ancient holiday of the dead. Churches and communities host fall festivals and “safe” trick-or-treat parties. We encourage trick-or-treaters to be cowboys and ninjas instead of monsters and demons. One online youth pastor suggested that Christians should even use the holiday as an opportunity to mock evil and anger the devil. He quoted Martin Luther, “The best way to drive out the devil…is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn.” He quoted Thomas Moore: “The devil … the proud spirit cannot endure to be mocked.”
He did not quote the Bible.
So, Pastor, how exactly does that work? Do you inform the giggling gaggle of “Frozen” princesses on your doorstep that, “The devil is a jerk—here’s a Snickers bar”—?? If all my years of karate lessons taught me nothing else, it was to first avoid the fight if possible. This definitely is one clash I’m not starting.
Yet, despite the lipstick, Halloween remains a dark celebration and a major holiday for wiccans, witches, occultists and Satanists. No amount of amending and rewriting will ever tear it from its ancient evil roots. But to surrender and join in the festivities just seems wrong.
As a nation, I do believe we try to fight the forces of evil, even if some people no longer believe in the devil as a real being. We are concerned about hunger, poverty, sex trafficking, bullying and dozens of other problems plaguing us. We work hard and donate endlessly to fight evil 364 days a year.
So why do we then welcome evil into our lives and celebrate it on Halloween? And, more importantly, how can we be sure it will leave us by morning?
No Clever Conclusions
Of course, I’ll have my bowl of candy ready for trick-or-treaters this Halloween – no need to worry that I’m going to scold your little goblins or drop religious tracts into their trick-or-treat bags. But that’s where I start and stop. I’m saving my enthusiasm for other holidays that celebrate life, light and joy.
And finally, as Mom always said, “If you can’t say something nice about someone, don’t say anything at all.” Perhaps I should try to apply that to my least favorite day of the year. Hmmm…one good thing about Halloween: it prevents Christmas from overrunning Walmart in October.
But that’s an opinion for another day.