Halloween a good time to confront our fears
I grew up in a small town in Iowa where Halloween was celebrated
with a good deal of fear, and the most exciting time was the next
morning when children roamed the streets, checking out the damage. The damage was never that great. One year, the big boys elevated
a farm wagon, dragging it up the steps of the local high school.
The morning after Halloween, the tongue of the wagon was hanging
out the third-floor window of the science laboratory. Most of the pranks were more trouble than they were worth.
The weekly newspaper didnt cover the weird tricks, not even
writing a damage report for the Thursday afternoon edition. Some
people claimed they got too much soap on their windows, but that
was always a matter of opinion. We figured some people deserved
it more than others. Besides, it never occurred to any child in my hometown that
we would be more frightening than the adult people we were trying
to filch for candy. For instance, there was a rumor that old Roscoe
Bean was a fearsome man who often chased after young children
with his bullwhip. Of course, those of you living in the golden years know that
bullwhips are about 20 feet long and can be made to snap louder
than most small pistols. We knew what Mr. Bean looked like: a
tall, skinny man with a long, unkempt mustache and hair that fell
all over his face. I had heard him whistling in his garden, but
not a tune I could ever recognize. We thought he would be a handy
man with a bullwhip. So, as the Halloween evening was closing, I suggested to my
pals that Roscoe Bean was our target like it or not. The
time had come to prove our manhood. We were 8 years old and ready.
We crept up to the back door of the darkened Bean house and rapped
three or four times. We could see the curtains were pulled back.
The radio was playing somewhere inside. We rapped again and suddenly out of the house like a mad demon
came Roscoe Bean, lean, hard and on the run. We stood looking
at him and screaming bloody murder. Then we ran faster than God
had ever given us muscles to move. Out and across the street we
ran and stopped in the Gaylords yard four houses down. We were huffing and puffing more out of fear than exhaustion.
Then we saw him come around the corner and hold up a whip. He
shook it at us, as a demon would. Then he went back inside the
gray house and left us alone in the silence of the night. Roscoe Bean may have been the greatest danger to children during
those Halloween evenings in my hometown. When I think about it
now, I know he would not have hurt us. Bean just wanted some peace
on those evenings, and when we disturbed the tranquility, he decided
to scare us real good. In fact, we never tried to trick or treat
Mr. Bean again. Now, the sad reality is that there are all kinds of people
who are eager to hurt children. Thats why it is so important
to look at the theology of this day very closely. Because of all
the religious holidays on our calendar, Halloween in the past
few years has been the most sadly corrupted. For Christians, the liturgical history of this celebration
reaches into the darkest days of the faith, when the only hope
in a society plagued by disease and death was to find a church
and listen to the comforting words of Jesus Christ. The comfort
was, simply, that life continues after death not a bad
comfort even for these mean times. But what has happened to that message? Its as if preachers
are either tired of it or afraid they will frighten their parishioners
if they start talking about death. Truthfully, our society is
curious about death. Does anyone know anything about death? Is
there an authority on death in our society who can speak about
these dark subjects? The only experts I know are the clergy who
stand before thousands every Sunday and talk, talk, talk. But
they seldom speak of death and therefore words of comfort disappear. This void exists in a time when we need comfort more than ever.
Underlying the ghosts and ghouls is a genuine fear that the whole
world is going to hell in a handbasket and we cant do anything
about it because we, ourselves, are morally dead. Our fear is
that the world is a bit like that runaway airplane last week that
careened through space until it got tired and crashed into the
ground, killing everyone. Speak to that, Halloween preachers!
Clark D. Morphew
Posted For October 30, 1999