Each year I reiterate why I love Halloween, monsters and all!
Sometimes I want to say to religious folks, “come on, lighten up!” I recall getting into it with a middle-aged Catholic woman a few years ago who was upset with me because I embraced Halloween with enthusiasm and dressed my kids up as scary invisible monks.
That particular year, as I recall, I had a purple witch hanging from the front porch, looking as though she would swoop down upon my trick or treaters (they were after my candy, after all!) and a series of headstones with sayings like “I told you I was sick!” leading up to the path. The headstones were outfitted with purple and black tulle bows, and sandbag luminaria lighted the path, at the end of which was an “freshly dug grave” with one bloody hand reaching out (my husband wasn’t happy that I’d dug up part of the garden). The porch was also festooned with the black and purple tulle, as bunting, with white Christmas lights inside. The kids who came to our door were giddy and thrilled with it, and they were also happy with the live witch in the rocking chair, the one with the hat, the green skin and cackle who handed out their treats, and told them to “be veeeerrrrrry careful out there, my little chickens and dumplings…”
But she only appeared on the porch that year and never again, because she liked candy too much, and ohhh . . . it was ugly, the next day.
Meanwhile, Katrina Fernandez gives us the Virtue of Halloween:
I liken Halloween to a gringo version of Dia De Los Muertos. Ultimately it is celebration of life and death. On all Saints and Souls Day we pray and remember those who have died. In my home we have an ofrenda made in the honor of dead loved ones. Since my first son is buried in Alabama and our family plot is at a cemetery in Virginia visiting their graveside is not practical. Instead we visit a different cemetery each year locally and remove dead flowers, pull up weeds at head-stones, and pray for those dead. To an individual who holds death as taboo, Halloween and the days following it may seem unnecessarily macabre and death obsessed. It’s easy to take things we don’t understand and make them sinister in our minds. But Halloween is not sinister. It’s as harmless as Scooby Doo. Halloween jumps out from the bushes and scares the pants off you then lifts up it’s mask to offer you a cheeky wink.
You have to check out the picture!
Max blames Halloween for giving him trouble with women, while Fr. Longenecker reports that witches are real, and they’re not young mothers having a minor spell of fury.
Mark Shea: What “everyone knows” and is wrong about on Halloween.
Deacon Greg on the commercialization of Halloween
Francis Beckwith reminds us about Reformation Day
Frank goes nostalgic.
Agree with you. However, yesterday at Mass, an entire family showed up dressed for Halloween! I think that is definitely inappropriate, especially since later in the afternoon the church sponsored a party for the kids. The dressed up family sat in the pew in front of a Nun so I guess it was balanced out.
One thing we pagans dread about Halloween is it brings the nutters out. The local medial looking for a cheesy hackneyed witch feature, and dudes like Fr. Longenecker for a bit of gratuitous religious defamation. Rather than speaking to his church’s understanding of All Souls Day, he takes the opportunity to label others as “Satan worshippers.” Funny, that’s what a lot of protestants say about his outfit. Maybe on Passover he can pen a column about The Real Story on Jews and just where do they come up with all that blood to bake into their matzah?
I love All Saints’ Day and I also love Halloween. I think those of us who trick or treated in the late ’60′s-early ’70s grew up in the glory days of Halloween-before the invention of the “fun size” candy bar. Personally I always thought the full size candy bars were a lot more fun. Sadly, Orwellian euphemisms corrupted one of the best days of the year to be a kid.
I agree, being critical of Halloween because of its pseudo pagan associations (thanks to Mark Shea on that enlightening link he posted on Halloween’s history) is silly. I’m not critical of Halloween because it’s semi pagan; I’m critical because the whole thing is just childish. Let me clarify: it’s great for kids, say under ten years old. But adults who revel in it (with their decorations and costumes and parties) are putting on display the very fact that our culture refuses to grow up. Halloween is childish.
By the way, my two year old had a great time trick or treating. He went as Elmo.
I don’t know Manny-Some of my more creative costumes-completely homemade were when I was in high school and college-a squirrrel that had been hit by a truck, a wallflower, a killer bee, a fall tree with leaves. Although my friends and I stopped going door to door sometime in high school, people did enjoy the creativity we put into our costumes. I agree some have gone a bit overboard but I still enjoy if I see an older kid with a really original costume. Tonight I had one I-Phone at my door. Very cute!
My problem is with the sexualized costumes that they are trying to market for young-even preteen girls. As the mother of a 9 year old girl that makes my stomach turn. Funny, I seemed to draw more attention with my wacky costumes such as the injured squirrel than the other girls in their sexy getups at those same college Halloween parties -probably because I wasn’t afraid to look silly and it showed I had a sense of humor.
Kenneth, I know you know that there are plenty of Wiccans whom other Wiccans worry about, whom they think do unsafe or evil things which are bound to bring down bad consequences, and whom they think are opening doors to Very Bad Things. If I’ve heard about this stuff from my science fiction fan Wiccan friends and those of other occult traditions, when I’m totally not even involved in anything occult, it can’t exactly be obscure.
So why would you think it particularly strange that Fr. Longenecker might have encountered such people, or even whole clusters of such people?(Birds of a feather do flock together, and priests are people who usually have to deal with problems, not situations that are fine and dandy.
Why would it be so uncalled-for a response, to infer that whatever these people think they’re doing, they’re probably actually dealing with, or worshipping, Very Bad Things? Why would it be wrong for him to warn off Catholics (who are not supposed to get involved in the occult or join other religions anyway) from spending time with people who are doing such foolish and wicked things? (I’m fairly sure Wiccans don’t advise each other to hang out with people about to get three times their own back.)
So there’s some dark undercurrent of “Very Bad Things” in Wicca so nefarious that they can’t even be enumerated by you or Fr. Longenecker? You’ve confirmed the existence of such phenomenon by iron-clad rumor of “science fiction fan” Wiccans (who apparently have the inside dope on what Wicca is all about)?
Despite your assumptions, no, I don’t know of “plenty of Wiccans” who do unsafe or evil things. At least no more so than in any other faith tradition I’m aware of.
I can almost guarantee Fr. Longenecker has no real firsthand information about Wicca whatsoever. I would be very surprised if he’s read even one of our primary source books or spent any time with ordinary Wiccans and it’s a very safe bet he’s never attended one of our rituals. All that he “knows” of Wicca is that it falls outside of the authority of his church and is therefore misguided and Satanic. I have no doubt that he might profess to have had all sorts of contact from people who claim their lives were damaged in some way by their participation in Wicca.
I too have met many such people. They are, invariably, people who had serious emotional and mental problems and or a history of physical, sexual or substance abuse issues when they got involved with Wicca. They are also people who never had the opportunity or will to learn what we are really about.
The ex-Wiccans who may have washed up on the padre’s doorstep were very likely damaged teens who dabbled in magick as a way to “gain power over others”, drew themselves into association with other damaged young people or predatory leaders, and then had their lives spiral downward as a result of these and pre-existing problems.
I spend plenty of time cautioning young people about the pitfalls of trying to use Wicca as a refuge or way to cover over other problems. Fr. Longenecker, on the other hand, is not offering sage advice on common sense and metaphysics to prospective Wiccans. He is slandering all of us as willing or ignorant servants of evil. It’s no different at all than the blood libel and anti-Semitism of past centuries, and so long as today’s church men insist on targeting us with that sort of slander, they can expect to be called out on it every time.
I didn’t answer the door! It’s all very well and good talking about the roots of Halloween, but they were uprooted long ago, and what’s celebrated now is basically a wholesale American import that we can do without.
Do you know what I think is a shame? That so many of my neighbours, I don’t know what it’s like where you live but it’s common here, throw away the pumpkin flesh. It just seems like a waste of a nutritious vegetable. I go to a farmers’ market. Hopefully this week there’ll be a load of discounted pumpkins that they didn’t manage to sell for Halloween! That way I can get a decent meal for less, by making a soup.