Every year, Halloween gets scarier and scarier. I am not talking about the costumes but religious writers and activists who denounce the holiday as a pagan attack on God and faith. The creepies started early this year. Bloomberg columnist Amity Shlaes has written to denounce “the pull of the pagan” and ask people to think about how Halloween fills the vacuum left from the absence of faith.
First, I am a notorious Halloween fanatic. I have a blow up witch pumpkin on the roof and a blow up cat (with moving head and glowing eyes) coming out of the bushes. Skeletons hang from the trees, a cemetery graces the lawn, Frankenstein is reaching out from a bush near the door, webs cover the greenery, and floating ghosts hang above the door (and well as other finishing touches). If Halloween fills a void of faith, I am the black hole of faithless angst.
The premise of this column is that this is all something of a cry for help to fill such a void.
Halloween isn’t secular. It is pagan. There’s nothing else to call a set of ceremonies in which people utter magical phrases, flirt with the night and evoke the dead. . . .
There’s a reason for the pull of the pagan. In the U.S., we’ve been vigorously scrubbing our schools and other public spaces of traces of monotheistic religion for many decades now. Such scrubbing leaves a vacuum. The great self-deception of modern life is that nothing will be pulled into that vacuum.
While the well-written column cites sources like psychologist Carl Jung for the “modern myth,” there is another possibility: it is fun and you get to eat huge amounts of candy. There is that possibility that these children are not performing an annual ritual of the struggle mortality and the modern myth.
It is now a secular holiday regardless of any pagan origins. The column says:
Fans of the orange holiday may want to pause for a moment to look at the empty spaces between its rituals, as with the pumpkin’s smile. Some of us forego it to dedicate ourselves to one faith or another. But you don’t have to reject Halloween to ask what it may be replacing.
True, but what if I ask and find that it is replacing a year of dieting and boredom? Humans love to fantasize and this holiday allows kids to transform themselves into something unrecognizable. It allows them to scare or humor others. Such role playing is a healthy form of expression. It is not due to the angst of faithlessness and fears of mortality but the joy of invention and imagination.
Now, does anyone knew where I can get a ten foot spider with glowing eyes?
Source: Bloomberg
Amity Slaes is not a fundamentalist christian. She is a conservative jewish intellectual.
anon nurse,
I believe they are secretly working for a dentist lobbying group. 😉
Most Christian holy days were former pagan holy days (just like the saints were gods and goddesses). The early Catholic Church wrote the book on co-opting, though they didn’t use that term. It seems the most vocal remaining Christians are also the most rigid people.
I say that all this anti-Halloween stuff is really anti-Irish bigotry (since it’s Irish pagans who started this holiday). I’d like Amity Shales to explain why she hates the Irish.
Amity Shlaes:
“…But as much as we’d like it to be, Halloween isn’t secular. It is pagan… ”
As if “pagan” even has a coherent religious definition, Halloween has any meaningful religious content whatsoever, and anything ‘pagan’ must be rejected.
Here we have a rich, white, tax-hating conservative Christian fascist complaining about how her privileged worldview must be shoved down the throat of everybody else, lest Lord Jesus escape our consciousness for a single evening.
Yuk.
“I love Halloween. It is my favorite holiday.” -Blouise
“The fresh popcorn balls and warm caramel apples…” Blouise, too…
Ditto.
(What’s wrong with these people…)
Elaine,
Made a note of “The Tailypo”–an American ghost story … I don’t have it but will get it. We’re big on reading to children. 🙂
SwM,
I miss the homemade treats from childhood. Trick or treating used to take hours as many had mini feasts prepared and would invite the trick or treaters into their homes for food, drink and bathroom breaks. This one neighbor made the best popcorn balls I’ve every had – sweet & salty and fresh! Another made fantastic caramel apples … heaven.
Of course there was always the party-pooper dentist who passed out tooth brushes … yuck! The fresh popcorn balls and warm caramel apples may be gone but the party pooping dentists are still passing out tooth brushes.
Swarthmore mom,
“The Ghost Eye Tree” was one of the picture books that I used to read to my students. The illustrations in the book are great.
Love Halloween, too. My daughter just called about her Halloween costume options. Austin is really fun at Halloween time. There are lots of vintage shops for costume shopping. Do you remember the book “The Ghost Eye Tree”,Elaine? When I moved to the south I started to hear some negative things about Halloween, and I got upset about it but decided my family would celebrate Halloween just like I did when I was a kid. People gave out more homemade treats back then but with all the scares no one does anymore.
Blouise,
My daughter used to get so excited decorating our house for Halloween when she was little. She’d begin weeks in advance of the “big night.” She loved scary stories and movies–as do most children. An adult and mother now–she still enjoys the holiday and decorates her house with Halloween lights, ceramic pumpkins, and jack-o’-lanterns.
My students loved the spooky stories I read them with the lights turned off and the electric jack-o’-lanterns turned on. One of their favorites was “The Tailypo”–an American ghost story. The version I read them was told by Joanna Galdone and illustrated by Paul Galdone. They liked that tale so much they would always beg me to “read it again…read it again!”
Some people are killjoys!
I love Halloween. It is my favorite holiday. I loved it as a kid. I loved it as an adult with kids. I love it as a senior with grandkids.
We start with big bowls of chili and all the fixin’s. We go trick or treating in hug groups. We return to homemade donuts and hot cider. We play games and award prizes for best costumes. We finish off the evening bobbing for apples. Nobody has to go to church. Nobody has to be naughty or nice. Nobody has to do anything other than have fun.
A few years ago when my youngest grandchild was awaiting open heart surgery and forbidden to be out in crowds of people, everybody went to my daughter’s house. All rooms in the house were assigned to different people who then had to work together decorating their room, dressing in costumes, and providing treats. The child stayed in her house and went door to door (room to room) trick or treating. All the older kids took part and the decorated rooms and costumes were masterpieces of Halloween creativity. All the traditions, chili, donuts, cider, awards, games, etc. were followed … it just all took place in the house. That’s how important the holiday is to my family and friends.
Thank You Elaine! <\:)
Great clip Elaine!
This is such a ridiculous story. This writer has to be scraping the bottom of the barrel to writing about a holiday that allows kids (and adults too) an opportunity to escape the normal day to day drudgery and be someone or something else. And for the kids, they get to be kids! Why doesn’t Shlaes make herself useful and write about how Teapublican and some Dems actually voted to allow women to die on hospital floors recently. How could Jesus, or Buddha allow that?
This Is Halloween
Shlaes:
“Unmask Halloween, however, and you’ll also find some disconcerting features. Christmas and Easter may be secularized these days, relative to their past, but they remain Christian holidays. People value Halloween, like Valentine’s Day, because they can tell themselves that it’s not merely secularized but actually secular, which is to say, not Christian, Jewish, Hindu or Muslim.”
Oh, how awful! We had better do away with the Fourth of July, Labor Day, New Year’s Day, Memorial Day, Veterans Day. Can’t celebrate holidays that aren’t Christian or religious…can we?
Good grief, Amity, get a grip!
*****
BTW, did you know that the first jack-o’-lanterns were turnips?
http://www.onemorelevel.com/halloween/pumpkintoss.html
[“If Halloween fills a void of faith, I am the black hole of faithless angst.”~stealin this line, I will give credit :)]
A good friend, devout Catholic and one-time seminary student told me, “We have all sort of holidays why can the pagans have at least one.”
these people have slipped the surly bonds of reality for a world where their ignorance, insecurities and bigotry makes sense. Shortly after they are done hyperventilating about this they will commence the counter attack on the “war on Christmas”.
The only question is, are they so stupid that they believe this bullshit or are they just fanning the flames for the rubes? Hoping to keep the truly ignorant and insecure scared enough to control so that the 1% can continue to destroy this country for their profit?
Another reason to do it…if they say don’t….
People give out candy for free. I would say it is a communist, not pagan plot..
Halloween is a contraction of All Hallows Eve, which is the day before All Saints Day. Although the day use to be celebrated by pagans, no doubt still is, Halloween is an invention of the christian church and was intended to give a christian significance to the pagen feastivities. Early christians realised they wouldn’t survive if they were party poopers. It seems their modern day counter parts are determined to poop on people’s partying and that way lies tears of the lonely zealot.