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<\/a><\/div>\nI\u2019ve said I\u2019m a fan of Halloween<\/a>. \u00a0Partly because in my younger days the Halloween season marked the unofficial countdown to that Holiday of Holidays: Christmas. \u00a0Partly because it was linked to the autumn, my favorite time of year. \u00a0Partly because it was linked to those old school memories. \u00a0By now in school, we were moving past the unsure first weeks of the new year, making new friends, meeting new girls, reclaiming old friendships. \u00a0Football, apple cider, homecoming parades and bonfires, harvest time and farmers reaping in the fields, cornstalks and haystacks, you name it. \u00a0A flood of great memories.<\/p>\n We\u2019ve tried (and in recent years, I mean seriously tried hard) to keep some level of fun and festivities alive with the kids. \u00a0True, they are growing. \u00a0True times change. \u00a0True, things have sucked royally for the past couple years. \u00a0But try we have. \u00a0And when I say, despite it all, we still like Halloween, I mean it in the sense of everything it was, and all that it entailed for our kids, our family and our memories.<\/p>\n With that said, I\u2019ve talked with a few folks who have questioned an open Catholic\u2019s love affair with such a holiday. \u00a0Certainly in my Protestant days, among conservative Evangelicals, Halloween was a no-no. \u00a0Harvest festivals maybe. \u00a0But not Halloween. \u00a0The reasons being obvious. \u00a0Still, some have questioned whether Halloween festivities are consistent with a good, Christian household. \u00a0I think yes. \u00a0The reasons will be for another post. \u00a0But first, let me point out\u00a0that when I say Halloween, there are some things I mean, some things I don\u2019t, and some things that are along for the ride that I don\u2019t give much though about. \u00a0That is, there are several faces of Halloween when you get right down to it.<\/p>\n First, the \u201cHistoric Halloween\u201d. \u00a0Halloween, like Christmas, is a lightening rod for pundits. \u00a0Everyone knows where it came from. \u00a0Based, of course, on their particular agendas. \u00a0Either it was a pristine festival by lovely pagans that the evil Church stole, or it was a subversive attack against the Church by hostile forces of evil, or it was some slowly evolved holiday. \u00a0Fact is, we don\u2019t really \u201cknow\u201d. \u00a0That\u2019s because there is no document out there written in 1489 by Johann Smith that said \u201cOn this day, I, Johann, do invent Halloween.\u201d The best we can do is guess. \u00a0And those guesses, as with all history, are based heavily on what we hope to prove.<\/p>\n Still, we know that there were pagan holidays and non-Christian practices roughly coinciding with this time of year. \u00a0We know that the Catholic Church celebrated All Saints Day on November 1st. \u00a0And we know that the customs all have their origins somewhere. \u00a0Some find solace in leaning on that as a way to give validity to the holiday. \u00a0Some, such as the good people at Fish Eaters, see it as a chance to remind ourselves that Hell may actually still exist and be a real possibility. \u00a0I\u2019m OK with it. \u00a0I like the historic origins, as long as I remember how much we know and how much we only imagine we think we know. \u00a0So there is the Historic Halloween, which I always try to remember.<\/p>\n Second, there is the Harvest Halloween. \u00a0That\u2019s that holiday most associated with Colonial life, and steeped in the harvest season and the oncoming winter. \u00a0Borrowing heavily from Irish and other European customs, it really finds itself in our country in later years, but there is still that Harvest link. \u00a0That\u2019s where the pumpkins and haystacks and cornstalks come from. \u00a0It\u2019s also that \u201cHarvest Festival\u201d part that conservative Christians are comfortable with. \u00a0Truth be told, I\u2019m OK with it, too. \u00a0There\u2019s something rustic, natural in it that reminds us of more agrarian days, when life was tied to the seasons more than today. \u00a0I can\u2019t imagine Halloween without these.<\/p>\n Third, there is the Hollywood Halloween. \u00a0This is the part of the holiday that gets its cues, not from tradition or folklore, but from Hollywood. \u00a0What does Universal\u2019s Frankenstein<\/i>, Dracula <\/i>and The Wolf Man<\/i> to do with Halloween? \u00a0Nothing in the historic sense. \u00a0Nor do ghosts and spirits have everything to do with Halloween. \u00a0When we watch our annual \u2018Halloween Haunts<\/i>\u2018, we\u2019re reminded with Lonesome Ghosts<\/i> that it was Winter, more than Fall and the Harvest, that many old timers associated with ghosts and the spirit world. \u00a0Sometimes around either solstice. \u00a0But ghosts and ghost stories were every bit at home around the Winter solstice as they were in the Fall (there\u2019ll be scary ghost stories, and tales from the glories, of Christmases long, long ago<\/i>\u2026). \u00a0But thanks to Hollywood, and some select twists on old tales, many seem to reserve the Halloween season for that time when ghosts walk among us, in addition to walking corpses and vampires and other things never historically confined to the Halloween date. \u00a0Scary. \u00a0It\u2019s OK, and a fine part to a season worth remembering there\u2019s more to think about than terrorists or serial killers.<\/p>\n Fourth, you have the Commercial Halloween. \u00a0That was the Halloween tied to American commerce that enjoyed a boost in the bountiful years following America\u2019s victory in WWII. \u00a0Money was everywhere, and commercialism was taking off. \u00a0Buying stuff and things was all the rage. Plastics and cheap materials were making things available like never before. \u00a0Costumes abounded, and pretty soon there was a costume with a plastic vest and mask that allowed kids to be everything from Superman to the Devil to Howdy Doody. \u00a0 Other paraphernalia also began to be common, and decorations, cut outs, cardboard skeletons and other fun things could adorn a house for only a few dollars and make it as festive as the most holly and ivy bedecked home during a Victorian Yuletide.<\/p>\n Fifth, we have the modern Halloween. \u00a0This is the Halloween that, like so much else in our culture, is a giant hangover from the drunkenness of decades of materialism and commercialism. \u00a0Gaudy, cheesy and tacky statues, gravestones, blinking lights, fake webbing, neon signs, strobe lights. \u00a0And keeping with the post-Christian media saturation of our culture, mo<\/a><\/div>\n<\/a><\/div>\n
\nst costumes reflecting the latest in the same way that Dracula and Frankenstein became part of the Halloween mix of yesteryear. \u00a0But now that contribution is in the form of puss dripping zombies ala The Walking Dead<\/i>, or ax wielding killers in hockey masks, or gore and violence and heads with axes through the middle.<\/p>\n