My Jedi Moment: Celebrating Halloween Well Three Ways

Last updated on: October 25, 2016 at 7:43 am by John Mark N. Reynolds

My Jedi Moment: Celebrating Halloween Well Three Ways 2016-10-24T14:54:45-04:00 John Mark N. Reynolds

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Halloween is coming.

If you are convinced it is a pagan holiday, you are celebrating the wrong festival. Pagans had a fall holiday, Christians had a fall holiday. Some pagans became Christians and Christians appropriated some aspects of the pagan holiday to make a theological point. Modern pagans, who make up almost everything they do, have tried to “take back” some stuff we saved with an odd mix of Christian and Eastern theology as seen through the lens of Hollywood. As Christians, you should avoid celebrating someone else’s holy day. Philosophers of religion should avert their gaze from what Americans have done to high paganism. Plotinus weeps.

More concerning is the real world: decadent America combined with mass marketing has turned the whole thing into another excuse to consume in excess. If this surprises you, wait until you see what they did to the football championship. It isn’t Up With People and Tom Landry anymore, but a mix of bacchanalia and life-ending concussions. Don’t celebrate that day either, though I plan on watching a football game that day and enjoying a party.

Instead, let’s celebrate All Hallow and remember what the day recalls. On All Hallows, Christians recall that we die. That’s the bad news and the next day comes the good news: we will live again, but for now are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses. My grandparents and all those who rest in peace in the Lord look at the race we continue to run. They cheer on our successes (as Heaven counts success) and they lift us up to God. We miss them, but they (blessed thought!) do not miss us. They are bathed in bliss and see the justice in God allowing us our choice: reunion with them (and Him!) forever or the choice of loneliness. Halloween reminds me to choose wisely.

As a result, there is a serious side to the grownup festival. We tell stories of days past and vow that the family circle will not be broken by God’s grace. We remind ourselves that only death is certain and preparing for eternal life is the job of this mortal life. If the decorations are dark, it is because the darkness is real.

Most Christians have been farmers and in much of Western Europe, where these traditions were born, this is Fall. We are at the dying of the year, but also reaping the good harvest of our work. As a result, we use some food products, like a pumpkin (!) to celebrate. It is the mark of blessing to be able to use food for anything other than eating. Out of God’s abundance, if we have been so blessed, we craft reminders of endings and blessings. The year is dying, the feast is beginning.

There is a very old Christian tradition of taking some days to “dress up” as part of our revelry. We might turn society upside down as the poor aspire to the clothing of the wealthy while the wealthy imitate the dress of the poor. This is a healthy reminder that much of what separates the Prince and the Pauper are clothing: we are God’s image in our skin!

Christians also are creative, because Father God is creative. We make whole alternative worlds and like Jesus tell stories to make our meaning plain. Halloween (October 31) reminds us of moving from one world to the next and this is fantastic (in one sense) and so we practice the fantastic. We dress up as things that are not in this world, but are in the world that men create: imagination.*

For example, this year my lady wife will dress as the warrior Princess Leia and I will dress as Obiwan for our revels. This is fun, but is also a chance to try out a role, to imagine, and so become indeed better than we are. Hope can be bold (and wear a blaster)! I can aspire to be the wise sage, the Jedi master.

We are not, but we might be. This is Halloween, knowing what isn’t anymore, but also that much simply isn’t yet. It is fantastic and grim. It is very Christian.

Let us keep the feast well. There is better coming.

———————

I try to explain this more fully in this novel. And yes Kris, the sequel is well underway.

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