Every year when I see signs outside of churches advertising “Fall Parties” or “Harvest Parties” as explicit or implicit “alternatives” to Halloween, I do the proverbial facepalm. This is similar, in my mind, to Christians organizing “Winter Parties” as “alternatives” to Christmas. Christmas already is a Christian holiday. Why would we need alternatives to it? Sure, it can be celebrated in an un-Christian way: with binge drinking, inappropriate clothing, tasteless jokes. The same could be said of birthdays, but nobody proposes we stop celebrating birthdays because they can be abused. The same is also true of Halloween.
Yes, Halloween is a Christian holiday. But I won’t rehearse the history of All Hallows’ E’en, the evening before All Hallows’ (All Saints’) Day on the Church calendar. I won’t rehearse the history of the Protestant Reformation, begun with a bang on Halloween 1517 by Martin Luther. I am here to talk about anthropology. Inversion holidays, to be exact.
Inversion holidays exist in many cultures: they are days for reversals, turning things inside out, practical joking, donning costumes to disguise ourselves and pretend to be what we’re not, eating weird food (green punch with eyeballs floating in it, anyone?), and other topsy-turvy things. Purim is one such festival in the Jewish tradition, and others have been observed by anthropologists. Mardi Gras is another. In our context, Halloween is the most accessible and widely observed inversion holiday. a
Inversion holidays are thought to serve several purposes in a society, some of which are more intriguing than others. But I want to put inversion rituals in a Christian context and ask: What better way to celebrate All Hallows’ Eve than to invert the world for a moment, laugh at the devil, make light of death for a moment, reasserting the fact that tomorrow all will be well, and all manner of things well. For all the saints have the victory, not the devil. That is why the day after Halloween (“All Hallows Eve”) is All Saints (“Hallows”) Day, the day for all the saints. Tomorrow (Nov. 1) we remember that “The saints triumphant rise in bright array,” as the hymn says.*
As C.S. Lewis remarked in his preface to the Screwtape Letters, one thing the devil cannot stand is to be laughed at, not to be taken seriously. He was channeling Martin Luther, who (it is said) expressed the idea that “The best way of getting rid of the devil, if you cannot do it with the words of Holy Scripture, is to rail and mock him. He cannot bear scorn.” This is what we do on Halloween.
Halloween is a night full of humor, and it is (abuses notwithstanding) the right kind of Christian humor. Humor exists when the potency of evil has been completely dismantled. My husband and I laugh about the stomach flu we had in November ’09 not because it was any laughing matter at the time (I assure you it was not), but because we are well beyond reach of its potency. When the horror of an evil is safely behind or beyond reach of us, horrors can turn into jokes. Just as the Lord laughs from His heavenly throne at the battle cries of those who hate Him: He is beyond being affected in the slightest. Their slings and arrows cannot reach Him. He is utterly beyond their reach. He was not laughing on the cross; but He certainly can laugh now.
We have come out the winner. I and my husband have recovered completely from that terrible flu, no harm done, and it is powerless to do us any harm now. Our laughter is that of those who stand on the other side of the lion’s cage and watch it roar with impotence. Neutered of all its ability to cause harm, the lion becomes an object of amusement. Take away the bars, and suddenly it’s no laughing matter.
Halloween is practice. True, death still has power to do us harm. Satan is defeated, but nurses his mortal wound to the end and still snaps at us in his death throes. His power is real and still brings men and women down to hell. But his power is broken and so is death’s sting. We may make fun of the devil and his ways one night per year, as a rehearsal for the deep laughter that will overtake us on the day when the dead are raised imperishable, and Christ stands on the earth, and we stand with him beyond all reach of sin, damnation, pain, or death.
Halloween is not the devil’s night. It does not belong to witches, zombies, or Wiccans, either. That is a gross misunderstanding. It belongs to all the saints. The devils, witches, et al are brought out on that night in order to be mocked. So forget all the wild drinking binges you’ve ever been invited to, the lewd or tasteless costumes, the orgy-like atmosphere of frat-style Halloween parties. They have little to do with the real holiday. If we have ears to hear it, the merry laughter of the saints can be heard echoing through the night, because it is the laughter of the resurrection.
Alleluia, and Happy Halloween.
*But lo! there breaks a yet more glorious day;
The saints triumphant rise in bright array;
The King of glory passes on His way.
Alleluia, Alleluia!
From earth’s wide bounds, from ocean’s farthest coast,
Through gates of pearl streams in the countless host,
And singing to Father, Son and Holy Ghost:
Alleluia, Alleluia!
William W. How, “For All the Saints”<>
- For more on inversion holidays, see the Wikibooks entry or this Academia.edu article by John Morehead. (back)
