Halloween and All Saints

I have a very complex relationship to All Saints Day and Halloween growing up Catholic.

When I was a child, I went trick or treating, like most other children in America. I have pictures from when I was two years old, dressed up in a big giant pumpkin. In preschool, I dressed as a Care Bear. I didn’t understand much about that night, except that Halloween meant dressing up and candy. Four-year-old me understood that dressing up is fun, and it still is for me as an adult.

Then my parents met some people in school who told them that Halloween is bad, and demonic, and satanic. They decided to send me to All Saints Day parties every year, where I dressed as nuns and peasants. I never liked dressing up as a nun. I enjoyed the sweets and the games somewhat, but the parties always felt contrived somehow. Plus, the games were the same every single year.

I asked my mom to let me go trick or treating instead, but she never let me go. When I was trick or treating, Halloween felt light and joyful, never evil, or demonic. But then my emotions surrounding Halloween became so complicated in my mind.

This year, I wasn’t sure how Halloween would go. My family wanted to go to church Halloween evening in reparation for all the awful things that happen on Halloween. It almost sounded like a repeat of previous tumultuous and sorrowful years. I’m 20 years old, which many would say is much too old for trick or treating. But I never got the opportunity to go in my elementary school years. Many say it is for younger children, but I do not feel ready to let it go.

I dressed in an old costume from a dance recital and went as a ballerina, even though I am one in real life. My family wouldn’t have bought me a costume, and I am stuck at home without a car or money to go get one myself. I haven’t done this in sixteen years, so I had no idea what I was doing.

I went trick or treating, by myself, as a young adult, in an old dance costume, smiling the whole time, from ear to ear as I walked briskly from house to house. When I got back, I took the bowl in and gave out some candy as well. It was beautiful to see people so happy, becoming TV characters that they like, getting sweet things and smiles from people who live nearby. The beauty of it was good to participate on both ends. It is the sense of beauty in this world, in other people, in the smiles of children and the kindness of neighbors, that makes life worth living in this world.

The brilliant red and gold sunset was visible through the trees in our neighborhood. It felt like a blessing upon my evening, in a way, as I swung my hastily put together bag and walked through the neighborhood into the early evening.

It would be funny if it wasn’t so sad, how some evangelicals and Catholics believe something so beautiful is actually dark, and evil, and nasty. Jesus did say that would happen, that some would call good evil, and evil good. I felt so joyful to go trick or treating, as an adult, in an old costume.

I believe that God calls such things “good.”