Fernando Gros

All Hallow’s Eve

“Adult soci­et­ies — human soci­et­ies — are in dia­logue with death. The infant­ile soci­ety pre­tends death does not exist, or is someone else’s fault, or a pun­ish­ment for doing some­thing wrong. But the infant­ile soci­ety is para­dox­ic­ally mired deeper in dia­logue with death than any other.“
Robert Pogue Harrison

Hal­loween is big busi­ness. It’s fast becom­ing a com­mer­cial rival to Christ­mas, at least in terms of expendit­ure on food and dec­or­a­tion and the largely North Amer­ican tra­di­tions are being expor­ted across the globe cre­at­ing new mar­kets and fresh profits. Moreover, the rising pop­ular­ity of Hal­loween is inspir­ing some Chris­ti­ans — inspir­ing them to stage cul­tural protests, to write books (and talks and blogs and radio-rants…) sug­gest­ing that Hal­loween is a massive mani­fest­a­tion of evil (and yet fur­ther proof that everything out­side the four-walled sanc­tu­ary of the church is a seeth­ing gate­way to hell).

Or, to put it another way, Hal­loween is another front in the cul­ture wars.

It’s worth remem­ber­ing that our cur­rent date for Hal­loween comes from a medi­aeval European mar­riage of the Cath­olic High day for remem­ber­ing the deceased and the Pagan late Autumn fest­ival. This adop­tion of a local prim­it­ive fest­iv­ity as a date to host a Church cel­eb­ra­tion means that Hal­loween shares a tra­di­tion that also encom­passes Christ­mas and Easter.

Moreover, the com­mem­or­a­tion of the dead, together with quiet vigil and fast­ing was sup­posed to have an import­ant theo­lo­gical sig­ni­fic­ance. It reminded us of our own des­tiny and inspired thank­ful­ness for those who lived before us. If this kind of ven­er­a­tion of the dead shocks us today, then it is largely because death has been cor­doned off from the typ­ical rhythms of life (today, the accept­able ven­er­a­tions are largely mil­it­ar­istic). In this way our lives are rad­ic­ally dif­fer­ent from those of medi­aeval times, when life expect­ancy was short, infant mor­tal­ity rampant and the chances of sur­viv­ing dis­ease, ser­i­ous injury or even child­birth were poor.

But, death’s grip on our psyche is still strong, which is why it cap­tures our ima­gin­a­tion not just at Hal­loween, but in pop­u­lar cul­ture as a whole; in film, music and art. At the same time that some churches speak against the death-imagery in Hal­loween cel­eb­ra­tions, others employ hyper-violent com­puter games as a way to reach youth. Let’s face it, how many Chris­ti­ans take pleas­ure in movies that are little more than war-porn and delight in the moral con­tor­tions of the TV shows like 24? There’s more than a passing scent of hypo­crisy in the air.

Hal­loween as a season gives us per­mis­sion to talk about death, dark­ness and fear; it is a macabre satire. It even gives us a chance to rail against the false and infan­tal­ising mar­gin­al­isa­tion of human final­ity in our soci­ety. At it’s best, Hal­loween can help us pick apart our psyche and dis­crim­in­ate between child­like fears and fantas­ies and genu­inely grown-up con­cerns and evils. Yes, Hal­loween brings us face-to-face with dark­ness — which is not a bad thing in a cul­ture with such a santised out­look on life, where per­petual youth­ful­ness is wor­shipped and where any­thing approach­ing mel­an­choly is phar­ma­co­lo­gic­ally removed.

Not everything in the con­sumer cul­ture of Hal­loween should be embraced and of course, it is a season for respons­ible par­ent­ing. But, I wonder if Hal­loween some­times cre­ates a prob­lem for some simply because it lays open how child-like their faith really is — the preen­ing con­fid­ence of youth wrapped up in reli­gious lan­guage. Hal­loween is a time to remem­ber that life really can be ugly, evil and dark and that we need grace to extend to the depths of our fears — the fears we nor­mally are unable to articulate.

Luke Sky­walker: I won’t fail you. I’m not afraid.
Yoda: You will be. You will be.
The Empire Strikes Back

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 31st, 2007 at 10:34 am. It is filed under Theology and Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.