9/15/2023
Summer is packing it in, even in my little piece of desert in California. The sun is setting earlier, the cool breezes are hiking up at night. The pumpkin spice is rising from it's summer hibernation, and before too long we'll all be complaining about the cold. As my namesake is famous for saying - "To everything there is a season...".
As the weather cools down, tempers are not cooling with it. The country is in a perennial stew, and as always we have the Evangelicals stirring the cauldron with a big ladle full of Christian buzzkill. We are coming to the beginning of the Feast of St. Debbie the Downer, as our fundie friends proceed to make us feel guilty is celebrating all of the upcoming holidays with their own peculiar brand of puritan potpourri.
Holidays have a different measure when you are clergy. For most people they are a time of joy and celebration. Some, however, are filled with the pain of losses over the past year, or loneliness, or having society tell them that they are not worthy of any celebrations. Or that the celebrations themselves are unworthy or sinful. Clergy have a need to navigate all of these mine fields, and still try to get in a little celebrating ourselves.
For those who have been following along for awhile, you are aware that the Christianity that I practice and teach is not the same as we see plastered all over the headlines every day. We concern ourselves with showing the love of God to all - not in counting their sins and monitoring behavior, but in meeting people where they are, helping as we can, and sharing not only in people's sorrows, but in people's joys. Holidays are a brief respite from "real life" and it's concerns.
It wasn't always that way. The word "holiday" is derived from the religious concept of "Holy Day" - a day set aside for the observance and worship of God. Now there have always been celebrations and festivals and days of fun & leisure - on a sliding scale inversely proportional to the amount of money that you have. In our current, modern society we have many secular "holidays" as well as the religious ones, but religion likes to hold it's turf. And that's most of the problem.
America is a secular society, but it does recognize religious holidays. While the numbers never settle, the majority of this country believes in some form of God or spirituality, and our secular society has made allowance for that in making some religious holidays legal secular holidays as well. Christmas comes to mind. And my personal favorite - the most American of the religious holidays - Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is possibly the first secular-religious holiday ever created. It is a day set aside for us to give thanks to whatever form of higher power we hold dear, be it God, Gods, science or Elon Musk. A truly all-inclusive religious holiday.
Two Christian "Holy Days" - Christmas & Halloween, were absconded by the Christians to further their cause. I'll discuss Christmas at Christmas, but the crisp Autumn air is the bellwether for Halloween (formerly Samhain - a Celtic festival which celebrated the harvest and the coming shorter days). The Christian celebration is actually the following day - which celebrates "All Saints" - the "hallowed evening" before (Halloween) ponders the fate of the "lost souls" who didn't make it into the heaven club.
There are relatively few Christians who observe Halloween in its religious component in modern day America. The Hispanic Catholic churches (near me, at least), have a "Dios de la Muerte" mass, to memorialize those who have passed on from this life. Otherwise, as a celebration, it really never left it's pagan roots, and that is fine. Just as "love is love" - a celebration is a celebration.
Enter the FEPs (Fundamentalist Evangelical Puritans - I should copyright the term). The FEPs equate anything to do with departed souls passing on to be their territory, and they don't like it. They equate anything to do with the dead outside of the church walls to be Satanic. To be evil. To be devil-worship. To be sinful. To be an affront to God.
I'm telling you flat out. God has no problem with Halloween or any other silly idea that we, as humans, care to celebrate. God's pleasure is increased by our happiness & joy. God isn't a whiny, little toddler who gets upset with humans being silly for a day.
And Satan has no power. He doesn't make anyone sin. That is you (or me) doing the sin, of our own God-given free will choosing to act badly. Given that there is only one sin - to deliberately or negligently cause another harm to another, I have trouble seeing how playing dress-up and going heavy on the sweets qualifies.
BUT, BUT, BUT, But... the monsters and witches and skeletons - people even dress up as the DEVIL!!! IT'S DEVIL WORSHIP!!!!! My God, their heads are gonna explode!
No, it's not. It's a bunch of kids - and adults - playing dress up for fun. And to grub candy & treats. To gather in groups and laugh and have a good time. Culturally, for thousand of years people have played dress up at festivals and celebrations - some playing characters who were "mean" or "evil" or "monsters", and equally, or more so, they dress up as the heroes/heroines that defeat the monsters. Defeating the monsters is part of the fun.
Mel Brooks is famous for saying that to make fun, removes power from evil. Just about every film he has ever made included a joke about Nazis for that very reason. When we laugh, we remove power form fear, from sorrow, from pain, and from those trying to cause us that.
Jesus not only approves of Halloween - and our make believe attempt to deal with our fears in a playful sense - He is the house with the full size Snickers bars - and he lets you have as many as you want. He is laughing with us, and filling his own heart with friends reuniting and children playing for an evening before the winter sets in.
So rest your heart, and enjoy the celebration. Too little time on this planet is spent in joy & laughter. God would prefer we spend more time in this state, not less. And be sure to let Cotton Mather down the street know that he's invited to the party, and hand him a Snickers. It tastes better than the lemon he's been sucking on.
In Peace, Faith and Love,
Ecc. RL Brandner, New Ecclesiastes Ministries
Good reflection. These are getting better and better. You know the homily or reflection is well done when people want to respond!