The Christian “harvest festival.”

“Harvest festival” is what we Christians call it when we’re in denial about celebrating Halloween.

‘So is your church doing anything for Halloween?” I asked them.

“Harvest party,” he quickly corrected me.

I groaned inwardly. And a little bit outwardly.

“By ‘harvest party,’ do you mean having a big Thanksgiving-style feast, featuring foods from the autumn harvest; a prayer of thanks for the hard-working farmers and farming communities and agribusinesses who provide us with food—or do you mean the kids play dress-up, you feed them junk food, and there are games and prizes?”

“We’re telling them to not dress up,” he said, “but there are snacks, and games, and prizes.”

“Ah,” I said. “So it’s a sucky Halloween alternative.”

I could go on about the conversation, but it deteriorated from there.

This couple’s church is hosting a rather large “harvest party,” or “harvest festival,” or “Halloween alternative,” or whatever stupid name Christians come up with for celebrating Halloween, yet not really celebrating Halloween, yet not really not celebrating Halloween.

If you want to boil the way Americans celebrate Halloween down to its most essential point, it is a party for the kids. Kids enjoy dress-up; kids enjoy sweets; kids enjoy games. Give them anything that entertains them on or around October 31, and it will be Halloween for the kids.

Some of them go out of their way to disassociate it from Halloween—by having it on October 30 or November 1 or the nearest weekend (which somewhat defeats the purpose if you’re trying to keep the kids from celebrating Halloween) and of course the costume bans. In the case of this couple’s church, they’re having bounce houses and slides and sumo suits and other rough ’n tumble games that would make it impractical to wear a costume... which is part of their strategy to keep the kids from even wearing one.

But generally, they all do something Halloween-related. Sometimes there are costumes. Sometimes there’s an alternative form of dress-up—from “crazy hair,” in which you spraypaint, tease, braid, and otherwise make your hair look awful; to Christian T-shirts, in which you dress like a cheesy advertisement for Jesus. There is usually food and it’s usually junk. Some churches show videos, some have worship music, and some inflict a sermon or gospel presentation on the kids before the evening is out. Otherwise it’s a party for the kids. (And regardless of what the adults call it, the kids will still call it a “Halloween party”—until they’ve been properly indoctrinated by their parents.)

The reason for this disassociation? It’s the specter of evil. But that, I’ve found, has little to do with the kids.

Admittedly we have that too. Teenagers use Halloween to toilet-paper and egg houses. Teens and 20somethings flock to downtown Santa Cruz every Halloween, to show off their costumes to one another, generally make merry, and occasionally stab one another. ( I last went there three years ago—got it out of my system for the next decade.) There are evil people out there, and Halloween brings out the psycho in them. But so does Independence Day. So does Labor Day. So does any holiday where they can justify bad behavior. I could tell you about some family Christmases... but I won’t. Suffice to say we Christians don’t abandon Christmas because the lunatics have taken over; and I still think it’s stupid that we’ve done so for Halloween.

If you want to do something about the specter of evil, Christians are actually reaching out to the wrong group. The kids don’t need the alternative. The youth do. The churches need to reach out to the teenagers if they want to do something about the egging, TPing, stabbing, etc. They don’t. All their “harvest festivals” are child-oriented, and teenagers aren’t invited. (They are if you have a smarter-than-average youth pastor, but as I’ve ranted before, that bar’s awful low.) The reason Halloween is so scary to Americans is that we’ve allowed our youth to run off and raise hell that night, and undirected youth rapidly turns to misdirected youth.

Anyway, I got to talking about other subjects with that couple before I could ask them if their church couldn’t come up with a less pagan-sounding name than “harvest party” for their crypto-Christian function. Seems to me Halloween is still a very good name for it. “Hallow” means holy; “e’en” means evening. Hallow E’en: Holy Evening. But Christians, like everyone else, can’t always see past the superficial exterior.

October ’07 Synchroblog.

This post is part of something new I’m participating in: a synchroblog. Basically, a bunch of people all agree to write on a similar subject, then link our blogs with one another. So if you want to read other people’s rants on Halloween, check the pull-down menu and click, “Go read it!”

Lew A.: “Halloween: My experiences” Dan Allen: “Why Christians don’t like Zombies” Sonja Andrews: “Vampire Protection” Barb: “Halloween: The Heart of a Child” Mike Bursell: “Hallowe’en” Reba Baskett: “Halloween....why all the madness?” Johnny Beloved: “Apples and Razorblades” Julie Clawson: “Trappings Of A World In Which We Do Not Believe” Sally Coleman: “Encountering hallow-tide creatively” David Fisher: “Vampires or Leeches: A conversation about making the Day of the Dead meaningful” Adam Gonnerman: “What’s So Bad About Halloween?” Steve Hayes: “Who stole Halloween?” Steve Hollinghurst: “Removing Christendom from Halloween” Kay: “Halloween - Four Perspectives” Alan Knox: “Fall Festivals and Scary Masks” K.W. Leslie: “The Christian ‘harvest festival.’ ” John Morehead: “Rethinking Evangelical Postures on Halloween” Sam Norton Nic Paton: “Making Space for Halloween” Lainie Petersen: “Our Own Private Zombie: Death and the Spirit of Fear” Brian Riley: “Bloated Body Parts” John Smulo: “Hallmark Halloween” Sea Raven: “The Season of Samhain” Timothy Victor: “Appropriating Halloween and Creating Liminal Times” Paul Walker: “Peering through the negatives of mission” Erin Word: “H-A-double-L-O-double-U-double-E-N” Phil Wyman: “The Christians and the Pagans Meet for Samhain”