Ben Ryan asks what the continued popularity of Halloween tells us about our lack of unifying cultural events. 31/10/2018
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By far my favourite genre in the annual tradition of lukewarm takes on Halloween are the Catholic press articles that want to counteract the glorification of evil represented by dressing children as devils, witches and the like by dressing them instead in white robes or as saints. For examples of this genre pick up a Catholic Herald newspaper for the week of Halloween in [1] almost [2], every [3], single [4], passing [5] year [6]. I imagine the scenario in which I try to persuade any of my younger relatives to drop the werewolf or superhero costume in favour of dressing as Francis as Assisi and trying to “understand the soul of a saint” (honestly, a tough sell to adults who are trying to find such an understanding, never mind to 12 year olds), and suspect the task may be far beyond my powers of persuasion.
Perhaps there is a helpful middle ground? I might be able to persuade them to go out as St Sebastian being shot full of arrows, St Brigid putting out her own eye, or St Bartholomew being flayed to death. We have no shortage of gory saintly torture and death in the Catholic tradition. Even then I doubt it a bit, because where these efforts at re–Christianizing things fall short, worthy and pious though they are, is twofold. One, it’s not what everyone else is doing and children want, understandably, to be part of the collective activity, and, two, compared to superheroes, witches and werewolves, so far as children are concerned, Church isn’t fun (not even the goriest martyrdoms).
Those two factors are key. I am mindful of an excellent blog my colleague Paul Bickley wrote last year on the ridiculous Greggs sausage roll Jesus story, in which he observed that:
“Christians are obliged time and again to make a Hobson’s choice between sounding like pompous moralists or adopting a kind of faux sophistication where we pretend not to care that what we love is treated with about the same seriousness as a funny cat picture. So we join in and laugh along as a kind of reverse virtue signalling where we show how moderate and liberal we are. On balance, that’s probably best. But it also gives the impression that we couldn’t care less.”
This is an excellent point – and it applies well in some ways to debates about Halloween. I can understand those Christian who want to reclaim “All Hallows Eve” – which was traditionally a vigil before the feast days of “All Saints” (November 1st) and “All Souls” (November 2nd), when the Church remembers those saints who have reached heaven, and the dead who have not yet reached heaven respectively. I can understand why they feel aggrieved that they should be required to choose between making their children dress as saints and, therefore, being excluded from their peers having fun, or else steer into a festival that seems, if only very superficially, to glorify evil and usurp a Christian festival for a pretty empty consumerism.
If we’re really honest in this case though, this is a post–Christian festival which was lost because it was long little more than skin deep in a once Protestant (now majority non–religious) country that isn’t sure what, if anything, it thinks of saints and prayers for the dead. I would suggest that it’s hard to reclaim the eve of All Hallows if, in Christian terms, you’re not really convinced about what good the two feast days really are. It is notable that countries with a thicker Catholic identity have not been nearly as susceptible to the American–style Halloween marketing phenomenon.
There is a broader point though, which is the impulse of children to be involved in something that is both collective and fun. The British, as a people, are bad at that. Perhaps this too is a legacy of the Reformation, or else was never in the character of a more reserved people, but compared to most of Europe, and certainly to Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa, we do not really do collective, celebratory fun events that pull people together.
Think, for example, about Holy Week, which is marked in most of the Catholic world by parties, processions, passion plays, collective meals and general large scale public participatory events. The same is true of various other key Catholic festivals. Part of this can be attributed to the fact that the Catholic world is more religious (on the whole) than the Protestant one, according to the data on how many people consider themselves religious. But even beyond the religious element that still leaves us with a question. At a time when many are suggesting that there is a breakdown in collective national identity should we be more concerned at the lack of big, collective, bonding events that bind communities together? What do we have here to play that role?
Christmas is clearly of huge cultural (not to mention economic) significance, but includes relatively few big public festivities unless you are part of the minority that attend church on Christmas day. Otherwise there are things most people do (Christmas dinner, presents, trees) but are primarily done in individual families as opposed to in public.
New Year is slightly more collective, at least if you choose to go to a fireworks display, or to drink in a bar, but has no real unifying content to it. November 5th is probably the best we can muster, with people gathering to watch fireworks, have bonfires and the like. It is difficult, now that most of the most explicit anti–Catholic themes have been removed, to think quite what it unites us around, but it’s something at least.
Otherwise you are left with a few regionally specific festivities (e.g. Notting Hill Carnival) gatherings around specific events, particularly sporting events (the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics, football World Cups – though that only tends to include the English as a normal occurrence), and, lamentably, anything to do with the Royal family (weddings, babies, funerals, coronations).
And then there’s Halloween. A hideously plastic, American, nonsense festival that fills shops with junk and annually prompts another entry or two into the seemingly endless catalogue of horror films (the most boring, predictable and pointless of all film genres). And the tragedy is that the children are right. With the possible exception of November 5th Halloween is about the most fun, collective festivity we can muster. Is it any wonder people feel it is difficult to build communities? We are sorely lacking in culturally relevant events to unite us. There are no obvious solutions to that, but at the least it might be something on which we want to reflect.
