Navigating Halloween

[AgileGreenSeal]

Any Christian parents / grandparents here? How do you navigate Halloween in regards to your children?

In response....

@DeanElderberry & @MarginallyBetter yes, I agree there's some horrifically brutal stuff about which is not great to celebrate in and of itself.

However, it's like life isn't it? There are also some very brutal events within Christianity and the Christian faith (obviously) but whilst we grieve at injustice we celebrate the good and renewal which can be birthed through / despite / amongst trauma and suffering. We have to be ever vigilant in negotiating a balance throughout all this stuff.

There are potentially very traumatic events in the Nativity for example, Mary was unmarried and could have faced death, she then had to travel miles on a donkey whilst heavily pregnant, there then wasn't any room at the inn and she gave birth in a stable amongst all the animals. Yet she gave birth to Jesus!

With Halloween we get the darkness before the light of All Saints Day.

And then, Easter!

My children love carving pumpkins, usually beautiful patterns or little doors and windows rather than spooky faces. We talk about turning to the darker time of the year and we've read a fair bit about the history of how this time of year has been celebrated historically in Britain. We've done apple bobbing before, I make a warm spiced apple drink and we usually do some baking. We have made the traditional soul cakes some years. Now some of mine are older we will watch something atmospheric but nothing ghoulish or horror.

I have always been relaxed towards it as a Christian parent and have taken the children to Halloween parties that friends have put on etc years ago but over the last few years I have become more cautious as I have seen Halloween get a lot darker in recent times, it seems to be catered increasingly more to teens and adults as well as children these days and that has made it more gruesome and dark I think. Last year at a local stately home they had fake dead bodies hanging from the trees around the kids playground by mid October. That would never have happened when I was a child. The year before that a non-christian friend took her child trick or treating and was horrified by the hordes of teens in Ann Summers type outfits splashed with fake blood, 6ft lads dressed as the grim reaper, horrendous scream masks and other frightening horror film outfits. There was some one covered in fake blood with a knife sticking out of them and waving a fake machete. Horrific. And personally I think horror films are bad for mental health.

So basically I started off blasé about it and have become much more careful in recent years because I think the goalposts on what is normal/acceptable for Halloween have changed massively. I also don't like all the cheap polyester throwaway outfits, what happened the creativity of making an outfit at home!

I'm not against Halloween as a Christian, it's based on ancient traditions and those ancient traditions should be preserved in some form or other. But when it's become about serial killers, demons, weapons, dead bodies.. front gardens with fake gravestones that have skeletal arms erupting from the ground - just why?? Drinking out of fake skulls? Drinks made to look like blood, food made to look like worms, eyeballs etc. I don't get it. We've never done trick or treating but I support others who do, I don't think its a bad thing. Halloween from years ago where kids in homemade outfits would go guising and mostly receive apples and homemade confectionery seems SO wholesome compared to today. But that's the modern world, doesn't mean we have to engage with all of it though.

My DH is Catholic and has no problems with our kids dressing up as dinosaurs or marvel characters and going out guising.

Neither does our Catholic primary and secondary schools which host Halloween parties.

Yes and this is rapidly becoming more and more common. A lot of non-religious families don't like it either.

This is such a great post, thank you for sharing.

In America it seems the outfits are a big deal, but they almost never seem to be Traditional Halloween outfits.. more like Disney characters, lifeguards, superheros. I mean, I'm not saying that's great because it seems kind of meaningless but it's for sure better than people going round in fake flood eith fake knives sticking out of them. Seems in the US to be a big focus on community, original outfits and sugar sugar sugar. So yes it would be more acceptable to Christians over there I imagine, less of a focus on killing, the undead, demons etc.

It's not actual demons though is it? It's us seeing ordinary people who are dressed as demons...they are as human as we are. They just appear horrific. We have to see through the cheap polyester and fake blood!

No it's not actual demons. I just don't see the value or appeal in the direction Halloween has taken in recent years. I mean, I can see the value for the supermarkets - what a goldmine - but not for anyone else.

Necromancy at hallowe'en? Lol

The only raising the dead I've heard about is the christian teaching that jesus returned from the dead.

Honestly, do a bit of research around hallowe'en and guising and I'm sure you won't find devil worshipping being forced upon toddlers.

@DalRiata yes, I understand. (See my previous posts) I just think there is a need to keep on remembering the balance in all this. 🙂

It's just convenience like anything else. As most other Scots will tell you, Halloween has always been a big thing here. Kids used to make elaborate costumes of their own, go out guising, sometimes with the body of a "guy" in tow given it's so close to Bonfire Night. All of that involved time and effort, whereas you can just grab most of the same stuff while doing the weekly shop these days. Halloween when I was a bairn was a sea of Draculas, Mummies, Ghosts, Zombies, Skeletons, Werewolfs, Witches, etc, oh, and "Devils", think trident, forked tail, red horns etc. It hasn't changed all that much.

I always have to remind myself that the crucifix, which was a completely normal adornment for the walls of my childhood home, classrooms and community centres, in fact graphically depicts a dead or dying, semi-naked man covered in horrific wounds. It's so familiar to me that I 'unsee' what I actually is, unless I'm with someone from a non-Catholic background. I once went with a friend to look around primary schools in an area she was planning to move to, and she came out of a Catholic primary saying 'Did you SEE what was on the wall?'

Having said that, I'm otherwise easily grossed out, and can't handle any TV or films with even fairly mild depictions of violence.

@MarginallyBetter indeed! And there a certainly aspects of the Catholic faith I find hard to deal with - it can be very graphic. They certainly don't shy away from suffering. However difficult I find it, I do believe a lot of the teaching cannot be ignored. I'm a non denominational Christian myself, I find value in many of the different flavours of Christianity.

The Sacred Heart is a disconcerting if not scary image for those not familiar with it, and as for Christmas, imagine if we had Chinese tat depicting the stoning of St Stephen and the Massacre of the Innocents all set out in blood-stained plastic.

The trouble with a lot of this stuff is it isn't prepared to let the human imagination do its thing, it has to supply a centrally dreamed-up version showing every graphic detail.

@DeanElderberry

The trouble with a lot of this stuff is it isn't prepared to let the human imagination do its thing, it has to supply a centrally dreamed-up version showing every graphic detail.

I agree, that can be a problem and we do have a role to protect people, especially children, who might be affected detrimentally. We are all individuals with different backgrounds, experiences, strengths and weaknesses and it is wise to remember what we might be ok with others are not and visa versa.

But in saying that, (in my previous post) this scripture has just come to light!

"14 When Jesus saw this, he was indignant. He said to them, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these." (Mark 10:14 NIV)

I certainly need Divine Intervention in negotiating all this stuff!!!

@DamnitImTired Thanks for the giggle!

There isn't as much imagery lifted directly from slasher movies. It's quite PG. But there are generic devils and witches, etc, and plenty of scarier characters from movies (Joker, Chucky) as well as creepy clowns, killer clowns, zombies, grim reapers, plague doctors, corpse brides, creepy dolls, red eyed ghouls, angler fish, werewolves... One Hallowe'en I gave out candy to a lad dressed as a pimp who was accompanied by several 'ho's'. To balance that out, there were dozens of kids in home made costumes. The best was imo a mime.

"Christians" is an umbrella term.

Fundamentalists tend to shun Hallowe'en. English Christian fundamentalists a few centuries ago also banned the celebration of Christmas. Baptists that I know have all sorts of strange certainties about it (e.g. "it's the devil's birthday").

This may be impressionistic, but Catholics tend to accept it with gusto. Mexican Catholics in particular have their own Dia de Los Muertos celebrations that are very explicit in their focus on death and spirits and the liminal element of the feast. The skull is a very prominent motif of Dia de Los Muertos.

This is grist to the mill of some fundamentalists, who think Catholics are Satanists and doomed to hell. The more militant among them refer to Mary as the whore of Babylon, and the pope as the anti Christ. They also hate Jews, Muslims, and actually anyone who isn't one of them. Everyone else is a tool of the devil.

When my DCs were in elementary school (RC parochial school) they were allowed to wear their costumes to school, minus masks and with no weapons, heavy accessories, or 'excessive' gore permitted. There was always a school Mass the next day (All Saints Day).

@mathanxiety that was really interesting, thank you.

You've not ever seen an Ossuary or religious art, then? Or read the stories of what was supposed to have happened to saints in their martyrdoms or Jesus himself?

It's kind of the whole point of Christianity, you are going to die (and here are the skulls and holy relics, paintings of rotting corpses and frescoes to act as memento mori, along with the Catacombe dei Cappuncini, the Capuchin Crypt and Melior est dies mortis die nativitatis on the roof of the Capela dos Ossos, being a quote from the Vulgate in the 4th Century CE) - but if you accept Jesus, it's only going to be for a while and then everything will be wonderful.

Until the Medieval period, there was more of an emphasis in imagery upon Jesus up in Heaven in Glory, rather than the suffering on the cross, true, but the bit about death has been entwined with Christianity (and all faiths, really) since the moment the charismatic guy started pissing off the locals.

…but it has absolutely nothing to do with Satan. Sigh. Sorry your kids are missing out.

I listened to this video of an ex-witch talking about Halloween and honestly now I wouldn't even encourage dressing up and taking part at all, not even at the most basic level.

26 mins long but worth listening to, and quite disturbing in parts.

But why would comments form a person who used to be a member of a novel religion (neo paganism) invented in the 20th century put you off doing something that has been around in its current form (All Saints' Day coinciding with the New Year harvest festival) since the 9th century.