As a kid, Halloween is a holiday I really enjoyed but never really “got.” It was like: “Sure, I’ll dress up as a pirate and carry around a bucket in the dark for an hour to collect smaller-than-usual, less-tasty-than-usual brand-name candy from strangers, and then I’ll eat 10 pieces of candy that night followed by 15 the next day and gradually fewer and fewer over the next two weeks until it’s just down to the stuff I don’t like and I’ll let it lie around until my Dad eats it.
I will do that if that is the custom of this land.”
And the vibe I get from most people, even those trying to give a reason or origin story for Halloween, is that we all just don’t really “get” it. Because maybe, at this point in Halloween’s history, there’s nothing really to get. Perhaps the meaning this festivity used to hold is slightly outside of and beyond our culture, and that’s okay. We don’t necessarily have to have something specific to commemorate to dress a little silly and do something unusual for one night a year. In fact it’s rather nice to know that all the children and all the adults of a small, local community are interacting with smiles and frivolity and admiration for one another for a single night. So, yeah, Halloween is fine. It’s fun.
But I think there’s also a danger to it.
Halloween kicks off the Holiday season. Some might argue that honor belongs to Thanksgiving and Black Friday, but commercially, Christmas has already drifted into our stores and ads, and I’ll admit, I am not one to scoff at that. I used to work in church ministry, and we were discussing Advent in July and Lent before Christmas had happened. We needed that time to plan and prepare for how we were going to engage people throughout those special seasons.
What I learned from that was, if any of us want to be intentional about the way we celebrate the coming holidays within our families, we need time to brainstorm, plan, and prepare (whether that was Hobby Lobby’s exact train of thought when they plugged in their forest of Christmas trees in October, I don’t know, but I’ll take it).
But if we’re kicking off the holiday season with a more-or-less meaningless activity of high-sugar indulgence, there’s the danger that Thanksgiving and Christmas will come and go while we’re stuck in a “Halloween” mindset— that is, participating in the customs, enjoying the fun and feasting, without assenting to the particular reason for each holiday.
I think our culture has largely lost the ability to celebrate well. We’ve forgotten how. Probably for a whole multitude of reasons, but I think one thing that can help us re-learn to celebrate is that intentionality brought about by forethought—a planned rhythm of feasting, its complement and counterpart, fasting, and ordinary life.
So, October 31st, my kids will do Halloween because it’s fun and it’s the custom of our land.
But November 1st, All Saints’ Day, they will feast on that candy as a means of celebrating the lives of holy men and women from around the world and from across history.
And November 2nd, All Souls’ Day, they will fast from that candy to make some small sacrifice to aid all the men and women who have died and still need some help opening themselves up to the healing mercy of Christ.
And then for the next two weeks they’ll just eat some candy here and there until all that’s left is the stuff they don’t like and then their dad and I will eat it.
Those three days, October 31 – November 2, are like a microcosm of how we can be living out our entire year—a balance and rhythm of feasting, fasting, and ordinary life.
At the top of my Christmas list this year is a 2021 planner. Considering how 2020 has proceeded, it’s bold, I know. But I’ve got a lot of planning to do to figure out how my family, largely confined to home as we currently are, is going to mark all the wonderful, important events and people that are worth commemorating. That is:
Each of our birthdays
Each of our namesake saints’ feast days
Confirmation saints’ feast days
Any other saint-we-love’s feast day
Every Sunday
All Holy Days of Obligation (“More like Celebration, am I right?” is what I’ll say all-cool-like to my children)
All 50 days of Easter
Advent, Christmas, & the Christmas Octave
Baptism Anniversaries
Marriage Anniversary
And yes, your typical bank holiday here and there
There’s a lot we can celebrate in a year, and when we celebrate well, with reason and purpose, and not in the rushed, over-indulged, binging way we can tend to do, these feasts springing up frequently and pleasantly throughout our day to day lives will, I sincerely hope, give us greater openness to voluntarily fasting (with a purpose) outside of them.
I’ll keep you updated on how this liturgical living progresses and do stay tuned soon for some thoughts on celebrating well this Advent and Christmas.
For now, happy Halloween! ;)
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