I'm On the Square today, discussing the three-day cycle of Halloween, All Saints, and All Souls as the enactment of a mystery play. Come join me there.
And many thanks to Sarah for first reminding me of the medieval feel of Halloween.
PLUS! The Anchoress reflects, and includes some nifty costume pics, too.
One commenter over at First Things takes me to task for saying that on Halloween, "the day of the saints hasn't come." Her point, that it is the Vigil of All Saints, is a valid one. After sundown the night before, the feast has arrived. Still, in terms of imaginative iconography, I think that the move from darkness to light is a powerful thing. The Great Vigil of Easter is a vigil feast: technically, it's Easter, particularly in parishes which celebrate the Vigil in the pre-dawn hours. Yet, for all that the darkness is over, metaphorically speaking, we begin in a dark church, as in the tomb. Our sense of Easter is not belittled, but heightened, by the drama of light out of darkness.
She mentions, too, wishing to avoid neighbors with live snakes, and also registered sex offenders. To this I'd respond that you can look up sex offenders on the internet and avoid their houses on Halloween. Of course, for all you know, the stranger sitting next to you at Mass may be a registered sex offender, too. I don't let my children, even my teenager, trick-or-treat without an adult -- that just seems common sense. What doesn't seem sensible is to be more afraid of other people on Halloween than you would normally be.
One of the things I do appreciate about Halloween, which there wasn't room to mention in the article, is that at its best it's a neighborhood and community holiday which, despite what I believe is its very real part in a Christian narrative, cuts across sectarian lines. The businesses on our town square stay open late for trick-or-treating on Halloween -- the used-bookstore owner doesn't give out candy at home, he told me last year, because the ringing doorbell upsets his elderly mother -- and the City Lunch diner holds a carnival, from which my children came home dripping with cheapo treasures. It's also one night when we actually see lots of our neighbors.
I can appreciate the antipathy to the neighbor wreathed in live snakes, especially if he's really trying to be scary, and not just showing off his interesting pets for the sake of good herpetological PR. In our old neighborhood, there was one guy who used to dress up in some kind of monster costume and sit on his front porch, slouched in a chair as if he were a stuffed decoration. When children came up his front steps, he would explode terrifyingly to life. I think he thought he was just having some fun -- he didn't strike me as a malicious person at all. But my youngest child was very afraid of him. Solution: avoid that house next time.
11 comments:
I appreciate the comments about the community conviviality. We had a number of friends in our homeschool community in Virginia who did not celebrate Halloween, but had "Reformation Day" celebrations. We don't celebrate that one! But we did have a great time eating chili and cheese and drinking beer in the driveway with the neighbors and chatting with the neighbors who stopped by.
Congratulations. You also got a link from New Advent. Not too shabby.
Wild Bill
I really enjoyed your article, Sally. Gave me lots of food for thought.
Thanks, Emily and Jenn. I've never been anywhere where people celebrated Reformation Day in any kind of public way, outside their churches -- but I'm all for chili and beer in the driveway, whatever the occasion.
I'm afraid I've put a segment of the homeschooling population on the defensive, but I hope it's clear that doing things in a given way, and having thought through why you do it, does not mean that I think other people are weirdos for not thinking my way, or that everyone HAS to celebrate Halloween. We just do -- it was the one thing our oldest child really missed when we lived in England, and as we converted to Catholicism when the older two were relatively old (9 and 12), it didn't seem right to say, "Okay, now we don't do Halloween, and we do saints instead."
I also have kids who would NOT have dressed up as saints on Halloween, or been content to dress up and stay home, or go to Mass being the only people in any kind of costume . . . it's great that other people's families are happy doing this, but it wouldn't have flown with mine (and I know, because I've tried. I thank God daily for my parish and my priest for all kinds of reasons, but I'm thanking Him for the very fun All Saints party we have every year, so fun my TEENAGER loves it and doesn't think dressing up is dorky and Sunday-Schoolish).
So we have this holiday we have to do something with . . . either see it as having nothing to do with the days which follow, or see it as part of a progression. I've chosen the latter. I do think a lot in terms of imagery, and how imagery plays on a child's spiritual imagination. Plus, I'm very interested in mystery plays and in medieval doom paintings, both of which served as catechesis for the unlettered. Since we were already observing Halloween, it made some sense to me to think about how it "played" as part of a drama.
Anyway, I'm glad you enjoyed it, and I appreciate your taking the time to stop by and say so.
And Bill, thanks for letting me know about New Advent. Left to my own devices I would have missed it.
I have been fascinated by the medieval plays, too, so that imagery was really great. I read somewhere that Hallowmas was a medieval term? I had never heard or seen it before, but very interested to hear about the "etymology".
I dread Halloween's controvery. Wouldn't it be great if people just kept to their own domestic churches instead of judging others? As the Mystical Body, we are diverse. Surely there is room for a wide interpretation of how to spend Halloween!
Yes, I'd never heard the term before, either, until I stumbled across it in my rather hasty research for the article (note to self: STOP PROCRASTINATING). And while I'm sure the medieval church didn't have our modern Halloween in mind, I think a lot of the current imagery hearkens back to imagery which would have been very familiar to medieval Christians: mystery plays about the fall of the rebel angels featured scary devils, Hellmouth, etc. Many people in medieval England looked at terrifying "Doom" paintings above the church door every Sunday (and for a marvelous novel about the uncovering of such a painting, I highly recommend J.L. Carr's A Month in the Country, which I'm rereading right now). And while I realize that people's intentions these days have nothing to do with Christianity, it's possible, and can be catechetically helpful, to read that cultural imagery in a Christian light.
But you certainly don't have to. The interpretation of Halloween is not a non-negotiable matter of faith and morals. I had no thought of wading into a controversy in writing that article, though I know controversy is out there, and I hate it. (just as I hate the controversies over modest dress, wearing skirts only, etc etc etc. I think Satan LOVES those arguments).
One blogger in particular is very upset that I didn't present this article as "this works for my family" kind of piece. She feels that I've somehow indicted people who don't "do" Halloween by presenting the idea as I did. And clearly I'm kind of stung by that, because here I am going on about it. I have all respect and admiration for this person and her position and no desire to get into some kind of blog war. And in truth, if I'd been writing for a homeschooling forum, or a family magazine, or something like that, that's how I would have presented my ideas. First Things isn't a family magazine, though: it's a magazine about culture and ideas, and so I wrote about Halloween from that standpoint, without the "it's just what works for us" disclaimer. My intent was to interrogate *why* it works for us: if I'm going to do something, I should have a reason for doing it, and I should believe that reasoning to be objectively right, or at least defensible. Otherwise, I'm wrong, and I should change what I do.
In this case, I'm not sure that there's only one objectively right and true way to look at things, and I was presenting my case merely as defensible, not as THE right thing which makes other people's practices objectively wrong.
So I'm a bit dejected that intelligent people can't seem to see the difference between "defensible" and "the only way to do things."
*sigh* Obviously this depresses and upsets me, or I'd be able to stop thinking about it.
I meant to say, "'MANY' people's intentions today have nothing to do with Christianity," with regard to the practice of Halloween.
Great post and great article, Sally. I've felt blessed, locally, by our situation -- our closest friends here don't "do" Halloween, but our family respects their choices and they respect ours and it's never been an issue, thankfully.
Thanks, Karen! I expect to get over my own knee-jerk defensiveness any day now.
I think knee-jerk defensiveness is part of the fallen condition. :) At least it's part of *my* fallen condition.
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