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Enough. I suspect there will be gracious plenty "twick or
tweet"-ing this evening. Halloween has grown and grown in
popularity. Not only kids, either. Adults have fun with this
too. I remember one particular Halloween escorting my children
on their trick-or-treat foray. Erin was just a little
four-year-old, all dressed up in her finest wicked witch regalia.
She and David and their friends went up to a front door and
knocked. The man of the house opened it and leaned his head
out...painted up all green and ghoulish. My little Erin was so
nonplused at the sight that she fell backward, toes over teacups,
right into the bushes. You had to be there.
In terms of dollars spent, Halloween is now second only to
Christmas in expenditures - costumes, candy, decorations, candy,
parties, candy. Then add the dental bills - for dentists,
Halloween must really ring the register.
Of course, some folks take exception to the celebration. As
we hear every year, some of our more conservative churches make
no bones about their opposition. They claim that since the
holiday is simply a modern version of ancient, satanic traditions
which were originated by pagans, Christians should avoid it.
They are concerned that anything which would trivialize the evil
represented by devils, demons, and goblins should be avoided like
the plague. After all, "No one shall be found among you...who
casts spells, or who consults ghosts or spirits, or who seeks
oracles from the dead. For whoever does these things is
abhorrent to the LORD,"(1) says the Bible.
Others take Halloween and use it as a tool to literally
scare the Hell out of people - they take the Haunted House
tradition and make it HELL House where costumed participants
vividly portray what they believe will be the appalling
punishments and unending torture that awaits anyone who dies
without making a profession of faith in Jesus Christ.
For what it is worth, I do not agree with either position.
I do believe though, as one of my cyberfriends says, Halloween is
"a holiday in need of renovation."(2) First, it is appropriate to
admit that its origins are indeed rooted in pagan ritual, the
ancient celtic feast of Samhain (pronounced SOW-EN). For the
celts, November 1st was the beginning of the new year, so Samhain
was a New Year's celebration. But it also was a reminder of
death because Samhain was the celtic god of the dead, and the
observance came at the end of the harvest season when plants
died, trees lost their foliage, and animals went into
hibernation.
Legend has it that the Celts believed this was when the
ghosts of the dead came back to haunt the living. Specially
targeted for terror were those who had not given proper
remembrance to their dearly departed. These spirits returned
with a vengeance; they rampaged through the land in the form of
bats and owls, ghosts and goblins.(3) Scary stuff.
One way or another, and as might be expected, the church did
not like its converts participating in pagan celebrations. So as
with Christmas and Easter, by the ninth century, we just took it
over, in this case building on the theme of death and creating a
day to praise God for the lives of the saints who had passed on
the year before. Of course the church insisted it be a solemn
day of worship and fasting, which was not much fun at all. So
the celebration of Samhain moved to the night before and became
All Hallow's Eve, or Halloween.(4)
The custom of trick-or-treating? That is thought to have
originated not with the Irish Celts, but with a European custom
called "souling." Some historians say that on All Hallows Day,
Christians would walk from village to village begging for "soul
cakes," made out of square pieces of bread with currants. The
more soul cakes the beggars would receive, the more prayers they
would promise to say on behalf of the dead relatives of the
donors. And that was the incentive for folks to give the cakes.
The belief of the day was that the dead did not go directly to
heaven upon departure from this life but remained in limbo or
purgatory for a time, and that prayer, even by strangers, could
expedite a soul's passage to paradise.(5) Another tradition says
that special Halloween cakes, made of breaded dough, called "soul
food" were given to the children of the city, particularly the
poor children. It was a feed the hungry program with a lot of
extra fun and excitement thrown in. Collecting for UNICEF these
days is right in line with the oldest traditions.(6)
For what it is worth, anything anyone tells you about the
origins of Halloween are not much more than glorified guesswork.
There are almost as many explanations as there are historians.
Still and all, as Robertson Davies wrote in the New York Times
awhile back,
So how DO we return to a "deeper meaning of Halloween?" Let
me offer a simple suggestion. Use it as a reminder of a
marvelous heritage of faith, and of one aspect of that faith that
we tend to forget...perhaps on purpose. For as many differences
exist between the lives of those Christians we remember on an All
Hallows Eve or an All Saints Day, there is one thing they have in
common - they are gone from us. They have died. They have given
up this earthly frame and moved into a heavenly life.
Gee, Preacher, what a wonderful idea! Why didn't we think
of that? Take one of the most fun holidays of the year and spend
it thinking about death. Sure. Strange as it seems, that is
precisely what I have in mind...IF (and this is a big IF)...IF
you think of it as a Christian.
How do we do that? Think of death in the same way as the
apostle Paul in our lesson from Philippians. He says, "dying is
gain." Really? We are tempted to mutter, "not for us, it
isn't." We look around the world and see little children dying
of exposure and starvation and our hearts are torn because so
little is being done. We watch in horror as older citizens waste
away in the relentless onslaught of age finally wanting nothing
so much as surrender. We see friends knocked down in the prime
of life by debilitating disease that finally claims them, and we
hate death! We HATE it! Instead of seeing death as sweet
release, we think of ourselves and feel a profound emptiness, a
deep sense of loss. Loss is the opposite of gain, at least for
those of us who are left behind. Think of death as Paul did?
Not easy.
Why? Selfishness, obviously. We would much rather not be
deserted by our loved ones. My Dad has been gone from me for 20
years; I would love to be able to talk with him again about
things of mutual concern. I would like to share church
experiences, to talk of preaching and teaching, to ask advice...
maybe even to play a little golf. I wish he were here. I know
his life today is better by far than anything he ever experienced
on this earth (especially the way he played golf), but selfishly,
I can still wish he were here.
But there is more. Our thoughts about death, our dislike of
it, I think respond to some innate reverence for physical life.
We grow up learning that all life is precious. In backyards all
over the world there are buried shoeboxes with the remains of pet
turtles and parakeets over which children have shed sad tears.
Young soldiers return from the horrors of war with reports of
nothing so awful than coming face to face with another young
soldier from the other side whom they are forced to kill. The
abortion debates that continue in our nation center on this
belief in the sanctity of life. The nation wept Friday as US
Open Golf champion Payne Stewart was remembered - lost in a plane
crash...42 years old...too young. There is something about life
that we see as grand and glorious which makes its end so utterly
depressing.
Perhaps death distresses us so because we see what it does
to those who are still here...the family and friends. We feel
it. We see Payne's young family suddenly without a father and
provider or another without the love and care of a mother. We
wonder how they will survive. A close-knit unit is now no longer
complete.
On the night my father died, after all the friends and
acquaintances had come and gone, the family sat around the
kitchen table, talking quietly. We thought about our Dad. We
missed him. We were not worried about him...we knew where he was
and that he could triumphantly say with Paul, "for me...dying is
gain." But finally Mom said, "I've lost my best friend." It was
a heart-rending moment, and it still is now 20 years later.
Tennyson wrote in his poem In Memoriam:
That is what we hate about death...what it does to those who
are left behind.
Then can we ever get to the place of thinking about death as
the apostle Paul did? He said, "My desire is to depart and be
with Christ, for that is far better." The Greek word he uses is
the word for striking camp, loosening the tent ropes, pulling up
the tent pins and moving on. Death is a moving on. William
Barclay, one of our century's most prolific but also most down-to-earth New Testament scholars, recalls the terrible days of
World War II, when the Royal Air Force stood between Britain and
destruction and the lives of its pilots were being sacrificially
spent. He writes, "they never spoke of a pilot as having been
killed but always as having been 'posted to another station.'"(8)
What will that other station be like? We have only the
sketchiest details, but we firmly believe that there is more to
life than what we experience here. From week to week we affirm,
"I believe...in the life everlasting." We believe that death is
not a period but a comma in the story of life. And we know what
Jesus said: "In my Father's house there are many dwelling places.
If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a
place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will
come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there
you may be also."(9) No wonder Paul says, "dying is gain." He has
a place in heaven set aside for him and his landlord is Jesus
Christ.
As to not knowing what lies on the other side, we know all
the scripture has to say about it, of course...gates of pearl,
streets of gold, bejeweled walls...poetic language to describe
something indescribable. No more pain, no more tears, no more
death. It will be incredible. I am firmly convinced that it is
SO good that we would be miserable in this life if the details
were filled in for us. We would not be content to wait and do
the work we have been called to on this earth.
Since last year's All Hallows Eve, two of our church members
have crossed to the other side: Lib Brogdon and Slick Shepherd.
Special friends. Both lived fruitful lives; both in their own
way made this world a better place for their being here. Both
were, with the apostle Paul, ready "to depart and be with
Christ." If either of them could be in this pulpit this morning,
I know they would say, "dying is gain."
Two of our members dead in the past year. Really? I
remember D. L. Moody's words about dying. "Someday you will read
in the paper that D. L. Moody of East Northfield, Mass. is dead.
Don't believe a word of it! At that moment I shall be more alive
than I am now. I shall have gone up higher, that's all...out of
this old clay tenement into a house that is immortal, a body that
death cannot touch, that sin cannot taint, a body fashioned like
unto his glorious body." It was the same kind of confidence that
enabled Dietrich Bonhoeffer to say, as Nazi soldiers led him to
his execution, "For me this is the beginning of a new life,
eternal life." Moody and Bonhoeffer were right, of course. For
them, dying was gain.
Years ago I read of a clergyman who was summoned to the
deathbed of an old man in one of the slums of London. Flight
after flight of stairs he mounted till he came to the topmost
flat and found his way into a miserable room with hardly any
furniture. There a poor half-starved old soul lay in great pain.
As the minister came into the room, he could not help but say,
"Oh, but I am sorry for you."
"Sorry for me?" the old man replied. "Why, think of my
prospects."
There is the answer to returning to "the deeper meaning of
Halloween," All Hallows Eve. Something SPECIAL is waiting on the
other side. Not witches and wizards or ghosts and goblins.
Rather the wonderful promise of life in the presence of Jesus.
And with the hymn writer we look forward to an incredible future:
Happy Day. Happy All Hallows Eve.
Amen!
1. Deuteronomy 18:10-12 2. Charles Henderson, "Halloween: A holiday in need of renovation,"
http://christianity.about.com/culture/religion/christianity/library/weekly/mcurrent.htm 3. ibid. 4. Graham Fowler, via Ecunet, "Sermonshop 1999 10 31," #44, 10/27/99 5. Jerry Wilson via internet, http://foundus.com/Halloween/history_.htm 6. Charles Henderson 7. Quoted by Charles Henderson 8. William Barclay, Daily Study Bible Series, CD-ROM edition, (Liguori, MO: Liguori
Faithware, 1996) used by permission of Westminster/John Knox Press 9. John 14:2-3 10. Charles H. Gabriel
Halloween deserves a house cleaning. Our strongly
superstitious age needs Halloween, but cannot do
anything with it in its present degenerate form.
Halloween has been thrust too much into the hands of
children. Dressing children as ghosts and witches, and
sending them out on the night of Oct 31st to demand
tribute from the neighbors, or perhaps to proffer
collection boxes for a variety of more or less worthy
charities, is contrary to the deeper meaning of
Halloween.(7)
My own less bitter, rather more.
Too common! Never morning wore to evening
But some heart did break.
Glory for me, glory for me;
When by His grace I shall look on His face,
That will be glory, be glory for me.(10)
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