Sights and Insights
Devotion for Oct. 22, 2024
It’s not that I dislike Halloween. It’s an enjoyable enough distraction, if not something I feel passionately about. I do not even dislike Halloween decorations. They can be fun. When I was little we had pumpkin-shaped colorforms that I loved putting on our windows for Halloween. If someone wants to get more elaborate than that, I don’t really have a problem with it. Except that I do, at least a little. This time of year, as I walk the dog or drive around town and see more and more houses with oversized statues and elaborate yard displays for Halloween, it makes me a bit sad. It is not about Halloween itself, though. It’s what the growing obsession with overdoing minor events like this says about our society that bothers me.
Humans need rituals. We need them to connect to others, connect to the rhythms of the year, and express values and the meaning we see in life. Creating rituals symbolically enacts what we see as important. They are needed both religiously and non-religiously. Religiously, we can think of the rituals of the church. The weekly ritual of worship, daily rituals of prayer, coming forward for communion – these things express the importance of the presence of God in our life. They also recognize the bonds of care that we build for one another in Christ, and remind us that some of our time is to be directed away from ourselves towards God and others in order to live a meaningful life. Meanwhile, the church calendar helps us to mark the passing of time and the changing seasons. It roots us in the rhythm of the world and God’s calling in our lives. It helps focus our sense of meaning in life to build our energies in anticipation and then joy as we move towards Christmas and Easter, for instance. Non-religious rituals can also help us to have time to connect with other people and share a sense of the common good. Even something as simple as saying hello to a neighbor can do this.
Rituals help us to express our values because they arise naturally out of meaningful encounters in our lives. You can’t fabricate a true ritual; it arises naturally out of what is important. Artificial rituals end up being superficial because they do not symbolically enact deeper realities. Yet because as humans we so desperately need rituals and meaning in life, we try to create new ones when we do not have true rituals in our lives. Much of the time these rituals are more stressful and valuable because they do not connect with any deep meaning or build deep relationships. We could point to many such rituals, but I happen to see it most clearly in Halloween decorations. For many people, it is an attempt to connect to others, but there is no depth to the connection. A connection based on putting some fun or creepy decorations in your yard can be fun, but it does not carry deep weight. Halloween does mark an annual occurrence of the height of autumn, but as it is practiced it does not connect us with the harvest or other natural rhythms, let alone the importance of our connection with the earth. Really its historical value is as preparation for All Saints Day the following day, but that connection has been lost. As I see so many people putting up these decorations, then, I cannot help but wonder if the people recognize the ways it represents an attempt to create an artificial ritual, because we have so few meaningful social and religious rituals in our world today. This is not to judge any individual – again, I have no problem with Halloween! – but when so many people seem to be so obsessed it is a sign of a broader issue of needing more ways for people to connect more deeply. Some of the energy being expended on decorations could be redirected in ways that might be more productive for them, perhaps even pointing to God’s presence in their lives in more profoundly meaningful ways than they realize.