Halloween Needs a Grinch

T hough I’d love to agree with the sentiment expressed by Anne of Green Gables — “I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers” — recently, I’ve come to wish we could skip the month altogether. Or at least its most prominent holiday, Halloween. Instead of enjoying potted mums, hay bales, and glorious leaf colors, Americans of late seem determined to fill their neighborhoods with all manner of tacky, trashy decor. We must turn our lawns into graveyards, pull skeletons out of our closets, and waste untold amounts of money on inflatable abominations. For a whole month we annoy our neighbors with sickly orange string lights, offend all spiders by covering our porches in fake webbing, and terrify small children with ten-foot statues of the grim reaper. A killjoy I may be, but I am not here to police what people put in their yards.

The real issue is this: Three hundred and sixty-four days of the year, Americans rail against violence and condemn crime. But as soon as Halloween approaches, houses and stores are spattered with blood, guts, and gore, and kids dressed up as serial killers are considered “cute.” What gives?

The word “Halloween” evolved from the phrase “All Hallows Eve,” meaning, in the Christian tradition, the day before All Saints Day. But All Hallows Eve is itself a Christianization of the early pagan holiday Samhain, which was a celebration of superstitious and occult practices. Then, as John Horvat II said in his Crisis piece from 2016, “In the ninth century, this pagan festival was replaced by a double day celebration remembering all the dead who are saved: All Saints Day remembers those who are uncanonized in heaven so that they might have their feast, too.” The eve was also known for charitable acts: “Children from poor families would go door-to-door, receiving food and sweets in exchange for praying for the souls of the dead. This ‘souling’ as it was called, gave rise to canvassing for ‘soul’ cakes which became part of the tradition.”

Sadly, what was once claimed and transformed into a celebration of holy men and women has now regressed into a pagan festival, one that holds nothing sacred. How is scattering plastic skeletons across the lawn teaching others the proper treatment of the human body after death? Turning our yards into faux graveyards is equally irreverent. And why do we laugh at kids sporting evil masks or covered in fake bloodstains? This is desensitization at its finest and encourages a mockery of death.

To quote Father John Riccardo, “Evil, quite simply, is real. It cannot be ignored. It must be addressed.” Yet so many of us today do not know this, have forgotten this, or choose to ignore this. What we choose to celebrate, and how we celebrate it, has physical and spiritual consequences. You may roll your eyes and ask, “Well, where on earth do you draw the line, then? Can I not attend Halloween parties? What about my cute dancing ghosts on the front porch? Surly they aren’t so bad.” In a world where we are so often okay with gray areas and wishy-washy attitudes concerning good and evil, we need to draw distinctions.

Now that I’ve infuriated everyone with witches smashed into their trees and crushed the joy of every kid dressing up as a dinosaur today, how are we going to make those distinctions? First, as Horvat said, this holiday cannot be ignored and must be reclaimed. One of the ways Catholics have tried to do this is by celebrating All Saints Day with parties where children dress up as various holy men and women. My childhood was filled with this wonderful tradition, and one of my greatest joys was to dress up as the most obscure and unguessable saint. (I once went as English saint Margaret Clitherow, who was martyred for her faith in the 1500s. This martyrdom consisted of being crushed to death by a heavy door, and my father obligingly made a small door for me to use as my prop at the party. Macabre? Certainly not — again, distinctions must be made.) But beyond this, dressing up for a party can simply be fun. Horvat writes:

While there are times of penance and fasting in the liturgical year, there are also times of joy. The Church as a true mother provides the faithful with festive days of feasting and merrymaking. Thus, the Church has no problem with merrymaking with people dressed up in costumes to visit neighbors.

In medieval Europe, it was very popular for people “to go mummering,” the practice of visiting neighborhoods while dressed up in disguises.

While wearing costumes to a party can certainly be harmless — I’ve worn my fair share of flapper and Minnie Mouse getups over the years — there is a disturbing trend of postgraduate, unmarried Millennials obsessed with costumes and role-playing that reaches its climax on Halloween. It is now another occasion for showing as much skin as possible and exuding crudeness because you are “in character.” Dressing up as a pack of crayons is one thing. Imitating a porn star is quite another.

(On a light note pertaining to the dress-up question and rampant hypersexualization, when it comes to costumes, an equally unfortunate historical illiteracy is on display. If one cares to be amused and enlightened on this topic for about 18 minutes, historical-dress aficionado Bernadette Banner is a must-watch.)

But back to the main point: Whether you are Christian or not, the pervasiveness of evil and our seeming tacit approval of it “just for fun” should be a cause for concern. Am I just a disgruntled, oversensitive 25-year-old? Maybe. I will note that the conservative tradition does leave room for acknowledging the reality of the supernatural — consider Russell Kirk’s popular ghost stories as just one example. But in a culture so deadened to the reality of sin and evil that someone once thought it was funny to dress as a Boston Marathon bombing victim, it’s time to say “No more.”