A Halloween Frame of Mind

A Halloween Frame of Mind October 31, 2020

It’s Halloween!–one of my least favorite holidays of the year. I know that offends many people, but so be it. Still, the onset of Halloween brings back memories–many of them religion and church related. Maybe that’s why I don’t like the holiday!

Jesus pumpkin 2

In rural Vermont, there was no walking from house to house for trick-or-treating. Our closest neighbors were at least a half mile away; accordingly, my mother logged 20-30 miles of driving every October 31 as my brother and I filled a grocery bag each with an amazing haul. This was long before the scares of razor blades and poison in Halloween treats—we collected unwrapped caramel apples and popcorn balls, maple sugar candy before it went on the market, freshly baked pastries, and more. People who gave only a candy bar or a little bag of candy corn were losers. Our haul filled several large bowls at home; despite my mother’s generally futile attempts at rationing, the Halloween proceeds usually lasted until close to Christmas.

We regularly heard at Calvary Baptist Church, where we spent most of every Sunday and Wednesday evening, that Halloween was the devil’s holiday, that participating in an evil holiday that celebrated pagans and demons and witches was a slap in Jesus’ face, and so on. But I was never worried, because my mother—a very devout conservative Baptist—was even more dedicated to common sense and her sons having as much of a normal childhood preacher’s kids could have. So we did Halloween, but we did not trick-or-treat at the houses of anyone who went to our church.

It may be due to his usually being on the road during the fall, but I have only one Halloween memory related to my father—it was the year that the communists tried to take the holiday over. In the middle of October during one of my early years in school—probably second or third grade—the teacher announced a new plan for trick-or-treating. Instead of gathering the usual tonnage of candy, this year we were asked to “Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF,” hitting people up for money instead of sweets, money that would be sent to help children in need around the world. In art class we made boxes out of pint milk containers to hold the money; there would be a blow-out party (with candy, presumably) at school in the evening where we would turn in the proceeds. I dutifully made the container and innocently reported the new twist on Halloween to my parents at home.

If I needed such evidence, I became fully aware of just how much the world had changed the first time I encountered Halloween in a city. Halloween 1988 found Jeanne and me with my nine and six-year-old sons in Milwaukee where I had just started my PhD studies at Marquette University, living on the upper floor of a duplex in a reasonably safe urban neighborhood. As the Monday holiday approached (my memory is not that good—I just looked it up on Google), newspapers and television newscasters announced that for purposes of safety and community solidarity, trick-or-treating would occur on the previous Sunday afternoon, October 30, from 3:00-5:00 PM.


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