Don't Do Halloween

Attrib MIKI Yoshihito (Creative Commons) 

As you cannot avoid noticing, today is 31 October, Halloween.  Are you getting spooked up?  If you are hoping to read something about tacky ghosts, black plastic spiders and pumpkins, I suggest you close More Than Writers immediately and move on.

You may be enjoying a quick cup of tea/coffee with your phone after spending the weekend making a Halloween costume for your child or grandchild to wear in school today.  It amazes me how educational establishments which pride themselves on being… oh so terribly… secular and too cool to include God in their harvest festival, celebrate Halloween.  What is there to celebrate, exactly?

Halloween (or Hallowe’en) is a contraction of ‘All Hallows evening’, the day before All Saints Day (1 November) - not to be confused with All Souls Day on 2 November, when we remember the departed.  The tradition originates from the pre-Christian Celtic festival of Samhain, which marked the end of summer, the harvest and the beginning of the dark and cold winter.  The Celts believed that on the night of 31 October the worlds of the living and the dead became blurred and ghosts of the dead returned to earth, so they lit bonfires and wore costumes to ward off ghosts.  All Saints Day was instituted – deliberately - on the day after Samhain, by Pope Gregory III in 800, an example of how the medieval church incorporated a pagan tradition and attempted to put a Christian gloss on it.  A significant proportion of those who emigrated across the pond were Celts (Irish and Scots), the ones who celebrated Samhain most heartily, so the tradition became Americanised – hence the orange pumpkins.

So what’s this got to do with Christians, writers and Christian writers?

I say Halloween is not a Christian tradition.  We should not ‘celebrate’ it or write about it.  Yes, I know there are many comps for ghost stories at about this time of year, but refrain from entering because the comp and the announcing of winners will be become an orange pumpkin and plastic spider fest on a webpage.  Write a ghost story by all means, but do it at any other time of year.  Many Christian traditions are being marginalised.  I say do write about them.  ACW has two wonderful anthologies of short stories, New Life: Reflections for Lent and Merry Christmas Everyone, both edited by Wendy H. Jones and Amy Robinson, and available through the ACW website.  Maybe ACW will publish more anthologies.  (Just saying.)

So what should we do on the evening of 31 October.  Our church holds an event for children and young adults which we call Luminous Light, involving board games, giant chess sets and crafts.  We’ve been doing it for a number of years and we admit it’s an uphill task.  Another suggestion – from a member of the ACW Essex Group (had to get this in) – is to take children and young adults ‘Treating’, calling on older people in the village and giving them chocolates or other nice gifts. 

I say don’t do Halloween because Halloween is not Christian.  What do you think?

Rosemary Johnson has had many short stories published, in print and online, amongst other places, Cafe Lit, Scribble, Friday Flash Fiction, The Copperfield Review, Fiction on the Web and Paragraph Planet.  She has also contributed to Together magazine and Christian Writer.  Her historical novel, Wodka or Tea with Milk, which is set during the Solidarity years in Poland, is… deep breath… due to be published in February 2023.  In real life, she is a retired IT lecturer, living in Suffolk with her husband.