Hallowe'en and dodgy Christian responses

Fundamentally, Halloween is a humorous reversal. We take bad, frightening or horrific things and treat them as if they’re good because it’s a funny thing to do. That’s not a step into genuine darkness at all. It relies completely on a shared moral compass.

I think maybe he has a point. He, in this case, is David Mitchell. I have a small series of confessions in relation to this. One is that I find David Mitchell's tv personality too remniscent of public school bullies for my taste -but perhaps that has no bearing here unless I fail to spot it in my reactions below (hence the warning to you). Another confession is that I used to be one of the people he's taking aim it in the referenced article. A further confession is that I've changed my mind about Hallowe'en. In fact I do think we need to pay attention to the underlying social psychology that Mr Mitchell draws our attention to and respond, as churches, 'smarter not harder'.

I used to make the argument that to celebrate the symbols of evil is to soften ourselves up for accepting evils and I used the analogy of dressing up as SS officers for fun as perhaps helping us to understand the dangers of such an approach. (Interestingly Mitchell along with comedy partner Webb, did a comedy sketch on just the theme of SS officers wondering whether they were, in fact, the baddies -actually a very clever piece of work). I'm not now convinced by that analogy or that the argument applies.

What I have become convinced by is that there is a social need for times when we look things that scare us in face, feel the fear and learn to put it in its place, maybe even laugh at it. There is something psychologically healthy about that approach. And we Christians ought to be helping this to happen for the health of society. So my challenge (to myself as much as anyone) is to think through how we could celebrate Hallowe'en and find ways to do so as Christians. In the first wave of response, in dark ages Europe, having services of remembering the dead, lighting candles etc was part of it. Our challenge now is to step up to affirming the psychologically healthy aspects of hallowe'en dressing up etc and to connect it to Christian spirituality in a positive way which also allows us to critique things that are unhelpful, unhealthful or genuinely dangerous.