Fright Night films offer gruesome images as part of their appeal. ‘We have to be careful what we look upon, what we bring into our lives,’ Father Kevin McQuone says.
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By Janis Fontaine
Some holidays are sacred (Christmas and Easter, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur), some are patriotic (July Fourth and Memorial Day), and some are just for fun (St. Patrick’s Day, Valentine’s Day).
“Those are beer-and-Hallmark holidays,” says Father Kevin McQuone, assistant professor of pastoral theology at the Catholic St. Vincent de Paul Regional Seminary in Boynton Beach. But Halloween stands alone with its dark and dangerous themes.
Most holidays feature indulgence. You might wake up with a pulsing headache or upset stomach the next day, but Halloween, the church says, has its own inherent dangers.
“Our celebrations should reflect our values,” McQuone said. “If someone came to my home, what would they see is valuable to me?”
Would they find tombstones and gargoyles? Witch silhouettes in the windows and skeletons on the lawn?
Some will argue the origin of Halloween has a religious connection, and it does. As Christianity spread and the church expanded its reach, local pagan holidays were often absorbed to make the people feel more comfortable. All Hallows’ Day — also called All Saints’ Day — is a Christian feast day celebrated on Nov. 1 in honor of the saints. The night before was All Hallows’ Eve, a more solemn night of fasting and prayer.
When Catholics assimilated the Celts, they enveloped the Celtic bonfire festival, called Samhain, which celebrated the end of harvest with huge fires and the slaughtering of animals. It was much like a harvest festival, except that it ushered in winter, the “dark half of the year.”
At this time of year, practitioners believed the veil between the living and the dead was thinner and spirits could cross over and take living souls back to hell with them. To appease the spirits (demons), the fearful folk left plates of food out to distract them and dressed in deathlike costumes to confuse them.
Somehow these customs have morphed into the current Halloween, with more dark debauchery seemingly added to the palette each year.
From a clearly practical sense, Halloween is one of the deadliest nights of the year for children. The reason? Motor vehicle vs. pedestrian accidents. A study by JAMA Pediatrics looked at almost 40 years’ worth of data and found: “The relative risk of a pedestrian fatality was 43% higher on Halloween compared with control evenings.”
Of course, the numbers dropped significantly over the last two years, but looking at traffic fatality numbers for the first half of 2023, they’ve soared back to pre-pandemic levels — and higher.
And it’s not just kids who are vulnerable: Adults are more likely to crash their cars in the wee hours of Nov. 1 compared with typical days, Traffic Safety Marketing reported, citing more episodes of drunk driving.
But what if you save your life but risk your soul?
McQuone likens your spiritual health to your physical body and what you consume.
“No doctor will say one French fry is going to kill you, but a steady diet of them will certainly have an effect,” he said.
What you consume spiritually can lower your defenses. A diet of grisly horror movies, virus-infested zombies and evil serial killers has an effect, even if you can’t see it. Showing your openness to darkness is the first step to inviting it in.
McQuone says to think of demons as germs and spirituality as the immune system. The stronger your system, the less likely you are to get sick.
McQuone says that although our intentions may be light and playful, no spirits are benign. This is one place where things are truly black and white, he says. No spirit is neutral, unaffiliated or independent.
“There is God’s team and not-God’s team,” he said. “And it’s not harmless just because you believe it’s harmless.”
The devil and the demons who tempt us were angels who defied their allegiance to God, McQuone says.
“They said, ‘Hell no,’ quite literally to God,” who cast them out. Lucifer (some say he was God’s choir director!) was the highest of them all, but he was not and is not a God, McQuone says.
“He’s a creature, evil personified,” and McQuone further cautions, “Don’t take your stance on the devil from the movies. They make the devil more interesting than he is.”
Still, ask psychologists and they’ll tell you Halloween is good for kids. Pretending, playing dress-up and using one’s imagination build bigger brains. These folks condone more benign costumes, like princesses and athletes.
Other psychologists say scary costumes are fine and Halloween is an opportunity to face our fears, especially our fear of death.
“Halloween rituals turn horror into play, death into levity, gore into laughter,” UC Berkeley psychologist Dacher Keltner says in an article for Greater Good Magazine, a publication of UC Berkeley (www.greatergood.berkeley.edu).
Safe, moderate levels of stress can be good for us. Still, are we talking about blood-drenched zombies and chainsaw-wielding killers jumping out at us like we find at Fright Nights?
McQuone’s best advice?
“We have to be careful what we look upon, and what we bring into our lives.”
Janis Fontaine writes about people of faith, their congregations, causes and community events. Contact her at fontaine423@outlook.com.
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