Some Thoughts about Halloween

Now that another Halloween has come and gone, I have decided to collect some of my thoughts about the annual observance of this mysterious day.

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          Are people as surprised and mystified as I am by the phenomenal growth over the years of the celebration (I hesitate to call it a holiday) of Halloween? Last year, 2012, it was reported that 170 million people participated in this celebration and spent in the neighborhood of 7 billion dollars. That’s right! 7 billion! Retailers love it!  I heard a young woman observe on television that, “It (Halloween) is almost bigger than Christmas, except for the fact that there isn’t as much food.” If that’s true, we’re in trouble.

            During my lifetime, Halloween has gone from a primarily small children’s day to one on which many adults decorate their houses with lights and elaborate yard displays. Haunted Houses which charge for admission are common and popular. What is going on here?

            I suppose that there is any number of easy explanations for the popularity of the modern celebration of Halloween. People enjoy things out of the ordinary and they particularly like dressing up in costumes. For some reason, they like to be frightened. It is also a fun day for children. However, I would look a little deeper under the surface of this phenomenon and make the observation that what we are seeing in the perseverance of the popularity of the day is a rebellion, a breakout of the human spirit which refuses to be contained. There is a need for the supernatural. It has to do with the history of thought.

            The Enlightenment occurred in the 17^th and 18^th centuries. It changed the way Western Culture looked at the world. At that time, “Western Culture” meant Europe. The Enlightenment was the watershed between the Medieval thought world and the Modern thought world. It involved a shift in authority, the diminishing authority of the Church and the increasing authority of science (scientific method). In the Medieval World, the Church had hegemony; in the modern world, the locus of authority moved to the reasoned perceptions of individuals. The opening salvo in the battle between science and dogma (the Church) was spoken by Rene Descartes (1596-1650) who at the outset of his famous quest for certainty said, “I think therefore I am.” Notice the shift of the locus of knowledge to the reasoned perceptions of the individual.

            The bottom line of the Enlightenment was that all statements of fact or claims to truth must be based on observation and reasoned perception. What emerged was a rational, ordered world with definite limits. It was an objective world that didn’t seem to leave much space for the idea of another world, i.e. a supernatural realm above the world of observed reality. Rationalism had won the battles but it hadn’t won the war. The human spirit was unwilling to be contained within the orderly boundaries of this brave, new modern world.

The 18^th century saw the birth of what is called the Romantic Movement in which there was an emphasis on the anti-rational, the emotional, and the supernatural. This reactive outlook spread across the spectrum of art, literature, and religion. The paintings of the English artists J.R.R. Turner and John Constable are good examples of the romantic influence in art. Nature comes alive in their work. It is not just an inanimate object to be studied and recorded. Their paintings glow with a mysterious light.

I would quickly disavow the notion that a neat division exists between persons who see the world in the classical manner, i.e. objectively and rationally, and those who perceive reality from a romantic viewpoint. Those two tendencies exist in most of us and often contend for dominance. The great German artist of the 19^th century, Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe, is often quoted as having said: Zwei Seelen leben in meinem Brust. Two souls live in my breast. 

When I was young I developed a rather broad interest in literature. One of my favorite books was an anthology titled “Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural.” Included were a number of short stories by Edgar Allen Poe. He was a very creative writer who originated the modern mystery story and made significant contributions to Romantic poetry. A favorite story illustrative of the horror story genre, of which he was a master, is “The Fall of the House of Usher.” I savor the first line:

 

During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been

passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country,
and at length found myself, as the shades of evening drew on, within view
of the melancholy House of Usher.
 

Wonderful stuff! It sets the stage for the story of horror to follow. Romantic literature!

            In England, as rationalism and empiricism moved to dominate thinking, the Church of England became, as one observer has described it, “decidedly arid.” Sermons preached by the clergy were an appeal to the reason of the listener. Pretty dull stuff! Not much appeal to the needs of the human spirit! John Wesley filled the void. In 1738, while listening to a commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, Wesley “received a strong assurance of salvation and felt an overpowering need to deliver this assurance to others.” He preached powerful, emotional sermons which touched people’s lives and drew them to conversion. He was an evangelist in the truest sense of the world. He preached the good news! Again, this illustration makes my point. The human spirit has deep needs beyond rationalism. The Romantic Movement called forth what is called “pietism” in religion. It was a word used to describe emotional acts of repentance and devotion. I think that the point is well made. The human spirit does have needs that go beyond reason. Halloween in some mysterious way feeds those needs. It is an irrational celebration focusing on the supernatural. People need depth and mystery in their world. They don’t want an inanimate (dead) purely objective world that is neutral. They sense a deeper spiritual level of reality which can feed their spiritual hungers, and so they participate wholeheartedly and perhaps rather unconsciously in the celebration of a day which partially meets the need to express these feelings.

Postscript 

            An interesting fact about October 31^st is that it was on this day in 1517 A.D. that Martin Luther, an obscure and frustrated German Augustinian monk posted his 95 theses on the door of the college church in Wittenberg, Germany. By doing so, he lit the spark which eventually ignited the Protestant Reformation, an event which significantly changed the face of Western Culture. It also, most importantly, was a response to the spiritual needs of the human spirit.

            In the broader Church, October 31 is observed as All Hallows Eve(preceding All Saints on November 1^st), and in the Lutheran Church it is celebrated as Reformation Day.