Appropriating Halloween and Creating Liminal Times

Danger! Syncretism ahoy!

(Part of the Samhain Synchroblog “A Christian response to Halloween“.) 

In the very small corner of my early Christian experience with a very small segment of the Christian pool, references to Christmas and Easter were met with disapproval. The former, Christmas, was viewed completely secularised and celebrating the latter, Easter, meant Christians were inadvertently worship Ishtar. Halloween was viewed with much superstition as a Satanic event, with roots in Druidism. It wasn’t till much later in life that I discovered the concept of syncretism and linked my mentors objection to it. They, like many others including myself, were simply seeking to distinguish between the core of our faith and what that meant and looked like apart from “man-made religion”, and syncretism was viewed as something damaging to the faith and people.

Years later I’ve moved to another small corner of the Christian faith and experience. Now I ask, “Can we celebrate Halloween as a Christian event? Is there any hope for it? Or by linking Christianity and Halloween are we creating a syncrotistic – read bad idea – event? What elements of Halloween can we take and make appropriate use of as a vehicle for engaging Christ and Spirit?”

For me the dictionary definition of syncretism is much happier:

“Syncretism consists of the attempt to reconcile disparate or contradictory beliefs, often while melding practices of various schools of thought. The term may refer to attempts to merge and analogize several originally discrete traditions, especially in the theology and mythology of religion, and thus assert an underlying unity allowing for an inclusive approach to other faiths.” (source: www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syncretism).

And a little theology helps oil the wheels of my notion that we can appropriate and celebrate Halloween:

By definition, however, every religion, including the Christian and Jewish faiths, are syncretistic. They all borrow, in broad and narrow senses, elements from the cultures and religions around them. According to the New Dictionary of Theology scholars from the history-of-religions school argue “that OT religion is a fusion of Babylonian and Hebrew… or Phoenician-Canaanite and Hebrew… religion, whereas the NT religion is a fusion of Hellenistic Judaism and the primitive religion of Jesus…” (NDT pg. 670).

I’m happy to go with the notion that our faith is essentially syncretistic. That puts me in good company.

A Christian response to Halloween

The subject we’re syncroblogging around is titled “A Christian Response to Halloween”. I’m a Christian and going to throw out a few ideas I have around themes in the Halloween celebration. This is one response, among many, so I invite you the reader to engage around them. I raised the notion of syncretism as, no doubt, someone is going to note that I’m actually proposing a syncretistic activity: appropriating Halloween as an opportunity for respect, honour and worship.

My thinking on Halloween is centred around the Halloween Anomaly for me as a Southerner as well as on the liminal time, the drawing together of the world of the living and the world of the dead. These anomalies are things I haven’t fully resolved but am starting to think more and more around.

• The Halloween Anomaly: Halloween is itself a syncretistic event. What we celebrate as Halloween stems from various sources. Additionally, the commercial Halloween bears a few resemblances to many places it originates from, partly due to the change in context and history but mostly due its commercialization and our move away from a spiritually engaged worldview and hence Halloween as we know it is something new.The anomaly, with regard to Halloween, for me at least, stems from living in the Southern Hemisphere. Halloween originated in the Northern Hemisphere and is celebrated at the end of summer and end of the harvest season. Hence it makes use of things like Pumpkins and Scarecrows for decoration. I live in the Southern Hemisphere, where winter is ending and the only thing I’ve been harvesting are trees to keep my fireplace stocked and my home warm. I will leave out this aspect to Halloween as I suggest a way in which we can appropriate it as resolving it may require creating a different kind of celebration, like the notion of a Gothic Christmas party as a tongue in cheek reference to the end of our modern harvest season – the Christmas shopping period.A further anomaly stems from the fact that my neighbourhood and country is turning into gated communities. Traditionally the community would get together and celebrate the harvest and Halloween as a community and family building event. I live in a suburb where my neighbours and myself all have security gates keeping people off our properties. I don’t even have a door buzzer. Seriously, kids are not going to trick or treat around here (I stand to be corrected though) and if they do they’ll not get much. Also, I know few parents who even like the idea of their kids being out on the street at night. Our streets aren’t considered safe and its not the ghosts and ghouls and goblins we’re afraid of but each other.
• The Liminal Time: Halloween is understood to be one of the times when the barriers between the world of the living and the world of the dead is weaker, thinner, and easier to penetrate. Hence, children dress up as the dead and as demons and other ghastly (but cool) creatures in order to fit in. That way the dead and ghastly will think they’re one of them. It is also viewed as an opportunity for the dead to return home and so often something to eat and/or drink was left out for returnees along with a candle burning in the window so they can find their way home. I mention this as an anomaly as I’m not sure what I’d actually do with these practices. I am open to suggestions.

And so this brings me to my response, which is centred around the premise of positive engagement and appropriately Halloween as an opportunity for introducing people to the Spirit and connecting them more deeply with their forebears.

• Let’s adopt some form of ancestor veneration: Hebrews 11 points out that we’re surrounded by a “great cloud of witnesses” – people of the faith who’re watching us. Though this is at odds with other biblical references to the state of the dead and their level of consciousness and awareness of this world we live in it points to the idea of the coliseum, where those competing are being watched and spurred on by witnesses.Whether or not our ancestors in the faith are conscious or not matters little. As individuals and as examples they’re worth remembering and aspiring to. Having a time to take stock of them, their lives, and their contributions will positively affect our lives as we are freed up see them for who they are and aspire to be like them.

  Additionally, I live in an African context, where the notion of ancestor veneration is oft misconstrued as ancestor worship with Christians being vehemently against either. Christians often close opportunities for engaging people of other faiths and beliefs. Halloween can be used as a time to when light-skinned Africans celebrating Halloween can connect, from their side, with dark-skinned Africans into ancestor veneration/worship.It can also be a time when Christians become open to the notion that today, in a number of communities, the ancestors continue to pick living representatives to serve their ongoing communities as healers and diviners. As a westerner, closed to such notions, it may be helpful to be introduced to such practices. As Christians usually blankets all experience of the spiritual as demonic, this will develop some balance and maturity in our view on the supernatural and its contributions to our world. By inviting others into our community and into our space to honour our own forebears we teach our children to honour them (and us) to. This also creates an opportunity for people to connect with our Great Ancestor who continues among us bringing healing and guidance through the Spirit.

• Let’s tap into the notion of the liminal time: Halloween is understood as the time when the barriers between the world of the living and the world of the dead are thinned and opportunity created for access both ways.Exploring the NT teaching on the Kingdom leads us to understand that in Christ we experience the presence of the future, the Eschaton, breaking into history in Christ and the Spirit, which in turn creates an opportunity for us to experience the Eschaton in our own lives. This sounds like a liminal time to me.There isn’t enough space to here explore the theology of the kingdom (but we should do so sometime) and it would be off topic to do so. Suffice it to say that it is the central them of Jesus’ message in the synoptic gospels and the central theme of the apostles and my pet mission in life.Just as Halloween is a liminal time so too were the Cross and the incarnation liminal times. The Person and Work of the Holy Spirit as the presence of YHWH and Jesus similarly creates liminal times. As humans serving as Christ’s ambassadors, we are liminal people – the barrier between this world and the world to come is thin around us. We see the breaking-in of the future when the sick are healed, the dead raised, people set free from demons, genetic ailments cured, spontaneous recovery from sickness and disease, people receive forgiveness, etc. Admittedly, we don’t see much of this. I’m convinced we should see more of this. I’d like to see more of this.In the context of remembering those who came before we can remember the One who came to give us life and life to the full, the One I referred earlier to as our Great Ancestor.As we look at the world we live in, we must surely recognize that every injection we can get of the Eschaton should be taken. Hence I believe we can appropriate Halloween as an opportunity to speak about liminal times and thereby create an opportunity for people to connect with the Spirit in experiential ways that lead to actual experiences of the Eschaton itself and perhaps even a little rubbing off into our lives.How can we do this? I guess if we’re actually celebrating Halloween, then after remembering the dead and noting the fact that it’s a liminal time we can simple invite the Holy Spirit to come and meet with us. As people experience the presence of God/-ess on them they can respond. Some will receive prophecy, others will receive words of knowledge, yet others images. They can share these with whoever is gathered. Should people relate to what is shared they should openly admit this. People can gather round them and invite the Spirit to bring into effect or deliver around what S/He has “spoken” about. 

This can surely make for an interesting Halloween celebration?

This post is my contribution to the October synchroblog on Halloween. There are links to the other contributions below:

• The Christians and the Pagans Meet for Samhain at Phil Wyman’s Square No More
• Our Own Private Zombie: Death and the Spirit of Fear by Lainie Petersen
• Julie Clawson at One Hand Clapping
• John Morehead at John Morehead’s Musings
• Vampire Protection by Sonja Andrews
• What’s So Bad About Halloween? at Igneous Quill
• H-A-double-L-O-double-U-double-E-N Erin Word
• Halloween….why all the madness? by Reba Baskett
• Steve Hayes at Who stole Halloween
• KW Leslie at The Evening of Kent
• Hallmark Halloween by John Smulo
• Mike Bursell at Mike’s Musings
• Sam Norton at Elizaphanian
• Removing Christendom from Halloween at On Earth as in Heaven
• Vampires or Leeches: A conversation about making the Day of the Dead meaningful by David Fisher
• Encountering hallow-tide creatively by Sally Coleman
• Kay at Chaotic Spirit
• Apples and Razorblades at Johnny Beloved
• Fall Festivals and Scary Masks at The Assembling of the Church
• Why Christians don’t like Zombies at Hollow Again
• Peering through the negatives of mission Paul Walker
• Sea Raven at Gaia Rising
• Making Space for Halloween by Nic Paton
• Timothy Victor at Tim Victor’s Musings
• Halloween: My experiences by Lew A
• An Unfinished Soul: Halloween – Four Perspectives