Halloween reclaimed?

Passage for reflection: John 11: 32 - 44

I’m really not sure about Halloween which falls this Sunday. It now seems to have become another commercial date which we are almost forced to mark. The supermarkets have been full of freaky chocolates for ages and costumes for children to go out in the dark dressed like ghosts and ghouls are added to over stretched parents demands lists! Like Christmas some will ask us “what are you doing for Halloween?” The pub across from church is having a Halloween quiz with fancy dress expected. Not really our scene! 

It would be very easy for me as a Christian minister to say let’s condemn October 31 as a bad thing. It is a bad thing when what might be perceived as harmless fun leaves people frightened when trick or treating gets out of hand. The commercial world seems to be promoting the celebration of dark things. We were in Whitby on Friday evening to see the abbey illuminated. The town was full of windows lit up for Halloween. This feels a new idea.

But… if we returned Halloween to what it used to signify then we make it more healthy. Let’s begin to call it again by its proper title: All Hallow’s Eve. On 1 November the Church celebrates All Saints and on 2 November it celebrates All Souls. These are two days we remember the light shining through those who lived faithful lives and are remembered for pointing people to the way of Christ. But before both days were marked, the Church used to acknowledge that death and evil are real. Whereas nowadays we don’t want to talk about death or evil but rush on to say “oh well they have been defeated, so we needn’t dwell on them too long.” But death is part of human experience and bad things happening in the world is part of human experience and sometimes it feels they are overwhelming.

We want those things to go. And some of us don’t want to talk about them. How about this to cope with the clocks going back this weekend? 

“With the darker days drawing in and British Summer Time, we wanted to reward the British public with a warm, comforting treat. Alongside gaining an extra hour in bed this Sunday, we’re giving away 3000 vouchers for free hot Greggs sausage rolls and the award winning vegan sausage rolls to take the edge off the arrival of the colder darker months.” 

The raising of Lazurus is an event that shows us the dramatic presence of God even - and perhaps especially - when other powers appear to be at the fore. Mary and Martha were devastated to lose their brother; Lazurus’s friends stood numb at the tomb; even Jesus wept. Remember Jesus got it in the neck for not coming to help earlier. Death was very powerfully the winner. 

What’s the Christian message? That God in Jesus enters the darkness and suffers the evil before doing anything about it. So maybe we need a night, an eve, which just acknowledges things aren’t now they should be, the dark side of life is a raw experience for so many people right now, but that a better day is coming, a walking out of the tomb, a bright light anticipated by the saints and the souls who tried through love and hope to send the dark things of the world packing. 

I just wonder whether Halloween is a spiritual opportunity to say that God transforms. But he comes into the reality we face to do that. To deny darkness and death happen is to say life is just fluffy, and we know that it isn’t. 

And let’s remember this from a wise scholar I enjoy: 

“New life starts in the dark. Whether it is a seed in the ground, a baby in the womb, or Jesus in the tomb, it starts in the dark.”

(Barbara Brown Taylor: Learning To Walk In The Dark)