1 Samuel 28:13-14 (NRSV): The king said to her, ‘Have no fear; what do you see?’ The woman said to Saul, ‘I see a divine being [elohim] coming up out of the ground.’ He said to her, ‘What is his appearance?’ She said, ‘An old man is coming up; he is wrapped in a robe.’ So Saul knew that it was Samuel, and he bowed with his face to the ground, and did obeisance.
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When I ask people what the term “Halloween” elicits, a shotgun spread of terms and phrases fire away in their head:. “Isn’t Halloween pagan?”,“My mother dressed me up as a hot dog and I got chili on it”, and “I turn off my lights so that people do not ring the door bell”. These are all responses that come from my head or the mouths of acquaintances. However, I want to focus on the spiritual dimension of Halloween. I believe that there is a massive disconnect between the attitudes and symbols of Halloween and the discussion of spirituality. In reality, we have a need for supernatural contact that only receives a collective sanction during the Halloween season.
A view of Halloween that connects to this dimension of spirituality is what I like to call The Purge. The Purge, a mid-2010s low budget box office success, tells the story of a society that has one night a year where people destroy all self-control and let their hearts engage in all of the corrupt and evil activity that they have been holding in all year. This purge leads to a peaceful and harmonious society. This Purge concept is, in my observation, what happens on Halloween for many adults in America. Participation in open displays of sexuality, offensive costumes, and open drug use are in the popular conception of a typical Halloween itinerary. These topics, while fun to discuss, are not the focus of my conception of The Purge. I do not have the wisdom nor the delicacy to talk about these topics with nuance and helpful precision. Instead, my conception of The Purge is the community catharsis with the occult, the supernatural, and death that oozes to the surface during Halloween.
Great evidence for this concept is the enduring popularity of the Halloween franchise, The Exorcist, Rosemary’s Baby, and the new popularity of the thriller-horror genre seen in blockbuster movies such as Obsession and Weapons. I am fully aware that not all of these movies are specifically Halloween movies, but I guarantee you as the month of October rolls along, these movies will rank in the top 10 movies of all streaming platforms. These movies, especially Obsession, destroy the lie that as secularization and modernity increase, the interest in the supernatural inherently decreases. Obsession, being the most recent movie on this list, contains explicit motifs, allusions, and key plot devices that employ the occult. The New Age spirituality and occult behavior is treated in Obsession with a level of, as one writer put it, “unseriousness.” The consequences of the invocation of the supernatural in Obsession do not 2 need to be restated.
Alongside divinization, the topic of death is not to be overlooked. Death, inside of most social circles in the West, is a topic that is consciously avoided during the routine discussions of the year. Cycles of discussion include politics, war, and maybe even religious activity, but no discussion of the rapidly approaching meeting with death. This leaves many with the reservoir of cliches to pull on when death finally makes his way into your life. However, Halloween serves as the catharsis for many people’s fear and underlying rebellion against death. In an attempt to pacify the ultimate enemy and to placate all of our unhappiness stemming from the realization that our lives and our choices will amount to a big nothing-burger, death is embraced in the Halloween season. When we dress up as either the harbingers of death or death himself at Halloween, it is our attempt to make fun of something that has the ultimate reign on this Earth. It is the equivalent of my nieces making a comedy sketch about how much their parents suck for making them go to bed at 8 pm. This ritual sketch at Halloween, while humorous, attempts to, and fails to, distract us from our unhappiness that inevitable death brings. The West, in our prosperity, sees death as something that will never come. “You can’t stop what’s coming.”
The above thinking leads me to the conclusion that humanity was and is made for more. We were made to yearn for the supernatural and to hate death, that thing that robs us all of joy. The suppression of the supernatural inclinations by modern people is something that will rear its ugly head. With the forsaking of traditional religion, the avenues of hedonic pleasure, hatred, and the occult are what remain for the seeker. These make for pyrite when we need gold. That gold is Christ and his resurrection. The resurrection is the greatest news to those who fear death and hate the overwhelming fact that their lives have no cosmic difference. Christ has crushed the gods of this world and demands something from all of us. That demand is to come into His heavenly family. We, being sons of God, are now in harmony with the divine and can seek pleasure in knowing who God is. We can see that death really does have no sting because there is a man who broke the brick wall that stands in front of all of us, the brick wall that is coming towards us at a million miles per hour. All glory be to God.
Burke Rollins (Class of 2027) is a Religion major from Winston Salem, NC. He serves as a Writer for Christo et Doctrinae.