I am conscious at this time of year there can be some embarrassed coughs over the mention of Hallowe’en parties. As a pastor I have parents coming up to me in church and other places asking what they should do when their child gets invited to a Hallowe’en event. These are not necessarily all Christians either. Whether we have faith or not, there is a lot of squirming and sighing around the 31st October.
Other people ask me questions like is it really all that bad? After all, what’s wrong with a bit of dressing up and fake blood? Aren’t Christians just getting a little bit anal about the whole thing? Is Satan really waiting around the corner to pounce on our children as they put on their plastic skull mask and latex severed fingers?
Here’s my take.
The thing I find most abhorrent is not the direct allusions to the darkness of horror, although they do concern me greatly, but the way manufacturers and supermarkets prey on the vulnerable with their vast array of related products. It is unrelenting.
Already poor, struggling parents are creaking under the social pressure to keep up with the ‘haves’ with supplying their darlings with DS Ninetedos, Wii, iPods etc, along with all the other seasonal gift occasions of the year. Then the Hallowe’en train comes to town with its expensive Scream masks, flimsy ghoul costumes and devilish chocolate products. Asda alone is expecting to make £280m from the event.
Most of us know that this growing annual event has come from the States, but do we really want to become as obsessed as the Americans with it? I have lost count on how many US vampire films and TV programmes have been made in the last few years, but that seems to be an ever-growing genre.
Am I simply being a killjoy or could it possibly have an unhealthy underside to it all?
I recently read in one newspaper how grown adults in the UK will be dressing up and pretending to be zombies on the streets in some cities in mock battles to mark the occasion.
Maybe these people have too much time on their hands, but you can’t help but be a little concerned at the level of involvement in this year’s Hallowe’en.
To question the fun, light-hearted spirit of Halloween may get you labeled as an earnest bore who is quietly tiptoed around in the school playground, but you know what? I’ve stopped caring.
I wonder why we have become so accepting of this American import. Fireworks Night was seen as our main thing, but it feels like it is being usurped by Fright Nights instead.
Now I have no doubt there is some fun dressing up in a white sheet going wooo-oooo, but when the sheet is replaced with a mutilated corpse carrying a plastic axe and going ‘Aaaaaagh!’ enough is enough surely?
Then there is the dreadful trick or treating. (sorry I am on a roll!) Is it really okay to knock on a random stranger’s door at night trick or treating? You know what, it really does scare elderly residents and very young children. It is only fun if you are in on the joke.
Besides, I bet their parents are probably the ones who take offence when in the daytime the JWs come knocking. Intrusion is intrusion, but at night even more so, especially when opening up the door to a pack of menacing children.
The Church of England in one of its more thoughtful outspoken moments said recently: “Halloween trivialises evil”. I think it needs to be said loudly and clearly. Hallowe’en sucks as much as a ravenous vampire.
A writer in the Times said last year they saw a Jack the Ripper Hallowe’en costume on sale for £10.99. They commented: “They are still available online this year, with an adorable accessory kit of “doctor’s bag and bloody knife” — a nod to Jack’s penchant for draping women’s reproductive organs around their necks. Well, if you can’t have a giggle over serial killers, what’s the world coming to?”
So, harmless fun or a bad tasteless joke?
The most disturbing side to this all is that we are becoming desensitised to what is good or bad. The lines are blurred with our response being everything is acceptable in moderation. The trouble is Halloween is not moderate, just plain OTT…and annoying.
Of course the Church will not be listened to. Not with the current hostility of Humanist groups and celebrity New Atheists holding centre stage.
My fear is though when faith groups and the odd humourist writer in a quality newspaper stop putting up an opposite view I wonder what happens next. History is not littered with great examples when faith views are excluded.
For me personally, the real evil is in the exploitation of vulnerable people whose lives are already just about held together with duct tape and string.
It is easy to see Halloween as a fun distraction, but ‘evil’ doesn’t not always come with cloven feet, pointy tale, goatie beard and a trident, it is much more subtle and seductive, like consumerism and capital greed.
The alternative is to offer something inclusive and non-consumerist. Christians celebrate God’s Light coming into the world to expose the darkness, but it needs a little imagination to see what that practically looks like.
One thing I know it isn’t is preaching to young children that they are going to hell. Maybe a better place to start is to stand up to injustice and the exploitation of the weak in times of financial pressure and much uncertainty.
Last year a Rector in County Durham urged people to boycott Hallowe’en, as many children already live hard lives and “there is enough darkness and evil to be going on with”. Hallelujah to that.
ASD
