Sabbath Devotional: Happy Halloween (a devotional)
It's fall again, which means, among other things, I'm planning costumes. Costco is the unfortunate mixture of Christmas lights and oversized skeletons. And we have thrifted a pumpkin carving kit to use tomorrow. Halloween is a very strange holiday, useful primarily for keeping kids up too late, stuffing them too full of sweets, and packaging them in polyester costumes (usually a little too large in the sleeves).
Shortly before my first child was born, my husband and I visited Salem, Massachusetts a few weeks before Halloween. I was simultaneously entertained, intrigued, and repulsed by the bizarre parade of profoundly kitschy Harry Potter-style witch costumes, crystals, palm readers, and tinctures sold in shops decorated (truly) with rats in bottles of formaldehyde. "How did this become a holiday?" I remember thinking. "Why do we commit to THIS aesthetic every 31st of October?"
I am all in favor of harvest celebrations, of apple cider donuts and pumpkin patches. I can even, on occasion, appreciate a good Poe poem. But why add demons and fake blood? Why the copious amount of third tier candy?
The first year my oldest child really recalls trick or treating was the year after all the COVID lockdowns had finally resolved. We lived in an urban neighborhood outside Boston at the time, and one of our first stops was a fire station. There was a scarecrow out front with a jack-o'-lantern for a head. My three year old drew back, anxious at the menacing leer carved into the face, but a fire fighter stepped out of the station at our arrival. He smiled widely, dropped candy into my boy's bag, asked him about his costume, and wished him a happy Halloween. Then we walked to the neighbor who, one year earlier, had entirely blocked access to their front door with an enormous flag of their preferred political candidate. The neighbor directly across the street from them had done exactly the same with the opposed candidate paraphernalia. Both doors were now decorated with pumpkins, ghosts and ghouls. Both neighbors cheerfully greeted every child and family that approached them with interest and delight that evening.
I don't know. Maybe it was coming off of COVID and an incredibly divisive presidential election. But walking with my boy around artificial spider webs, werewolves, spooky sound effects, and plastic cauldrons, I felt deeply connected to the community around me.
On Halloween, parents take their children into a world that is literally dark, made darker by make-believe. There are monsters lurking around every home. But step a little closer, and you see another reality: that behind the unwelcoming porches and unnerving driveways there are neighbors who, astonishingly, open their doors again and again to strangers (whatever their mask) to serve candy and hospitality.
It's risky to knock: you could be rejected. It's risky to open: you could be intruded. Because the world can actually be quite scary. There are bad actors, real conflicts, actual violence, warped morals. But on Halloween, we teach our children (and remind ourselves) that not everything is a frightening as it appears. The person behind the mask is more like us than we realized. The household we fear (whether bedecked with political flags or phantasmal decorations) may conceal kindness. And that more often than not, meeting your neighbors is rewarding. Because while there is darkness in the world there is also so much generosity, and help, and goodwill. And finding it can be as simple as knocking on a door, and opening our own.
So, though it's an odd way to sign off a devotional, I write with full sincerity and hope in the season: Happy Halloween to all who celebrate.
. . . . . . . .
Art is “Halloween” by Grandma Moses
Sarah Perkins is the peaceful root director at Mormon Women for Ethical Government.
