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Sure, All Saints Day Is Christian, but What About the Night Before?
Many Christians have problems with Halloween. There are many reasons for this, but I’ll mention two of the primary ones.
- Many Christians find horror and ghost stories and films objectionable. Surely Christians should be thinking about more pleasant things.
- In recent years, adults have made the holiday more of their own. With that has come the popularity of the “sexy” costume: “sexy nurse”, “sexy librarian”, “sexy mortician”, “sexy sexiness”, etc. The whole enterprise has become a dirty joke.
But the great apologist C. S. Lewis looked at these things a little differently. Both of these things can be seen as a reason to believe.
Published in Group Writing
“Almost the whole of Christian theology could perhaps be deduced from the two facts (a) That men make course jokes, and (b) That they feel the dead to be uncanny. The course joke proclaims that we have here an animal which finds its own animality either objectionable or funny. Unless there had been a quarrel between the spirit and the organism I do not see how this could be: it is the very mark of the two not being ‘at home’ together. But it is very difficult to imagine such a state of affairs as original—to suppose a creature which from the very first was half shocked and half tickled to death at the mere fact of being the creature it is. I do not perceive that dogs see anything funny about being dogs: I suspect that angels see nothing funny about being angels. Our feeling about the dead is equally odd. It is idle to say that we dislike corpses because we are afraid of ghosts. You might say with equal truth that we fear ghosts because we dislike corpses—for the ghost owes much of its horror to the associated ideas of pallor, decay, coffins, shrouds, and worms. In reality, we hate the division which makes possible the conception of either corpse or ghost. Because the thing ought not to be divided, each of the halves into which it falls by division is detestable. The explanations which Naturalism gives both of bodily shame and of our feeling about the dead are not satisfactory. It refers us to primitive taboos and superstitions—as if these themselves were not obviously results of the thing to be explained. But once accept the Christian doctrine that man was originally a unity and that the present division is unnatural, and all the phenomena fall into place.”
— From Miracles by C. S. Lewis
I like this. Maybe I’ll go as a Sexy Theologian this year. If only I had anywhere to go.
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Is this correct? Wouldn’t “coarse jokes” fit better?
Of course. 😇
I grew up not celebrating Halloween, but I’m a cosplayer at heart and halloween normalizes my idiosyncrasy. After learning more of how New Spain treats the Day of the Dead, I really became fascinated with treating Halloween and All Saints Day as sister holidays to focus on the dead. The 31st, to have a day remembering our ancestors, heritage, and parents, grandparents, or great grand parents no longer with us. If we had family graves nearby, we’d visit them. If I can get my stuff together, I’d like to incorporate putting flowers on graves at the local cemetary on Halloween. Emphasis on remembering more than mourning.
All Saints Day, I plan to teach them about a christian martyr. Hopefully my ideas see fruition. I’m a great idea person, I’m awful at follow through.
Vrouwe put it this way: “Halloween for a believer is a way of rendering the monsters and demons harmless. They’re just masks people put on and when you take that away, it’s still your neighbor or your friend from school”.
That’s why I used to bring him out every once in a while and re read him. I’ve not done that lately. I better go find him again.
You’re right. I’m afraid I relied on “cut and paste” here. Was it a British spelling variant?
True. I usually say something like, “It’s just a way to have fun” or “We’re not ‘celebrating’ death and demons and monsters. We’re drssing up like them. It’s a party!”
You know what would really be scary? A “sexy Hillary” costume . . .
“Sexy Kamala”? “Sexy Joe”?
Both of them look better than Hillary . . .
Joe in drag would look better than Hillary.
My wife and I used to run a children’s program at our church and one year our weekly meeting fell on Halloween. That resulted in one kid trying to tell another that he was evil because he wore a costume. Then I had to explain to the poor child that his Captain America costume did not constitute a form of Satan worship. So parents, I appreciate not embracing darkness, but please, a little balance.
As one costume for a single wearer?
And he’d have to squeeze his own shoulders . . .