Halloween Helps with Death Anxiety

The winding gravel road twists before you like the dry scales of a slithering snake. Distant, seemingly miles away stands a tall white house, hugged by a tall white fence. You walk towards it, armed with a mere plastic sack of candy, the stones of the street sculpting holes in the bottom of your feet. There's a cornfield on your left. And as the moon glows above, it's not a question whether or not monsters are hiding in that cornfield. It's a matter of what row of corn they're hiding in, and how long before you walk candidly past it. The tall white house grows as you move slowly towards it. Its lighted windows glow like the inside of a jack-o-lantern. Is that a hearse in the driveway? Your hand begins sweating so you wrap it tighter around the handle to your loot. Without a doubt a witch lives inside the huge house, brewing a stew full of little children like yourself. When she opens the door, green mist will spill out and you'll end up running the very road you arrived on. But before you can escape, the monster from the cornfield will grab you and eat you up.

Ah, the good old days! Fear and panic has never since been so much fun. The old witch in the big white house turned out looking a bit like your mother, handing out Snickers bars rather than death sentences. The house, with a station wagon parked outside the garage, really didn't seem all that big up close. The cornfield turned out being still as the harvest air. But years later, as you trek a similar dirt road with a child's hand cupped in your own, you feel the thrill of Halloween all over again. Excitement boils like a pot of bubbling stew, gushing over the rim of its black kettle pot. Behind you, the corn stalks snap, as if sliced by a sickle. And you feel like a child again.

When candy corn runs rampant, jack-o-lanterns blaze with a supernatural glow, and the streets are crammed with costumed children, Halloween is in full swing. But lately even a practice as innocent as trick-or-treating has come under suspicion from selected Christians. It's been called a Festival of the Death, a holiday worshiping false gods through occult practices. Halloween's association with death is clearly seen in its commercialized imagery of skeletons, ghosts, vampires, witches, and all else that goes bump in the night. The history of the holiday also is cited as a reason Christians shouldn't participate.

Dating far back to before the birth of Christ, to Druids All Hallow's Eve was a night to feast, a night when spirits were said to walk the earth. To scare off these spirits, people burned candles, and took disguises in the form of costumes. Spirits of the previously dead couldn't recognize the living from their own kind and as a result were driven back to the underworld. The concept of trick-or-treating began when it was thought to bring good fortune to give treats to those in costume. As this pagan celebration continued, the Catholic Church attempted to diminish it by offering the holiday of All Saints Day, falling every November 1. But the night before All Saints Day was still thought to be the one night of the year the realm of the dead was closest to that of the living.

It's this nearness to the domain of the dead that has caused some to speak out against the holiday. To pray for the dead is against scripture, it is said. If the dead do not know and believe in Jesus before they die praying does no good. Furthermore, a Christian is forbidden to participate in any occult practice that involves communication with the dead. The exact wording is,

"There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer." (Deuteronomy 18:10-11)

Few can argue with words of the Bible when their meaning is clear and precise. Communicating with the dead is an abomination to God. However, it can be argued that Halloween allows for this alleged communication, especially for children. Halloween is a time for both children and adults to have fun. Candy is the biggest reward, of course. But there are other ways in which Halloween can help children. It's a day for children to pretend to be someone they're not, gathering candy by the armfuls as they go in cognito to the world. The world of "pretend" can be real for a day, and healthy imaginations can be enhanced. Costumes allow this possibility, if only in a fleeting autumn day. Because of Halloween children can better understand who they are by comparing themselves to who they'd like to be. Boys pretend they're pirates or athletes. Girls dress as princesses or beauty queens.

A child's curiosity about identity is natural, as is the common belief in and fear of ghosts, ghouls, and goblins. Halloween is a perfect time for children to deal with such anxieties, allowing them to manage what is at other times nightmarish. On Halloween, it's okay to get scared. There is no risk of being embarrassed or laughed at. The fear for children is a literal fear of the dark. Monsters under beds or in closets are very real entities. Halloween allows children to explore and face these fears. Halloween makes conquering these fears fun. Such habits go a long way in developing personality and overcoming childhood fears.

While the attraction to Halloween for children is the literal scare of evil, those who accuse Halloween of being only about literal death and evil are missing the point. Halloween isn't about evil spirits roaming the earth anymore than it's about Charlie Brown and the Great Pumpkin. In ancient days when myth was might, people truly believed evil spirits roamed the earth once a year. But it was not these evil spirits that made Halloween what it is today. What has made Halloween such a controversial holiday is our fear of the existence of these evil spirits. Christians who speak out against the holiday do so because evil is tempting us, draping itself in a guise of a harmless celebration of sugar. But whether evil is tempting us or not is irrelevant. It is fearlessness of evil that is the true evil. God condemns idolatry of the dead. But Halloween can hardly be considered idolatry since trick-or-treating has derived from a custom to ward off the spirits of the dead. Had we never been scared of these evil spirits we would have had no reason to ward them off. So while Halloween remains an naive means of development for children, it represents a deeper fear for adults.

Stephen King says, "Fear makes us blind." Indeed it does, just as darkness does, and it is no coincidence that sight is hindered in the dark. But our fears aren't in response to beliefs of the supernatural, rather they're very realistic fears of dying ourselves. King himself admits to a childish fear of a cold wet hand grabbing his leg sticking out from under the bed covers. Though he doesn't seriously believe monsters live under his bed, he fears it all the same. And someday, his fear will almost become real. A cold wet hand, perhaps in a rubber glove, will reach out to place a tag on his toe.

Just like King's novels, Halloween's central thesis is to scare the living, with scary movies, haunted houses, and scary costumes. As it's become more commercialized death is, in a sense, all around. Plastic gravestones mark yards, fake spider webs stretch across doorways, leaves are bundled up in orange jack-o-lantern trash bags.

None of these things are truly scary because as adults we know they're not real. But they represent the holiday, and the holiday represents to us the very real emotion of fear. In reality very few of us actually fear black cats, and unlike our children, we tend not to believe in those other traditional Halloween creatures like werewolves, vampires, and ghosts. These things guise our true fears of mortality and inferiority. They are symbols for our deeper fears. The Bible speaks out against communicating with the dead but for adults the holiday doesn't propose a way of communicating with the dead. Instead, it proposes a way to manage the fear of our own death.

The fear of death is the biggest fear of all. Because death is such a taboo topic implies that repressed fears about dying are very real. And why do we have these fears? According to Elisabeth Kubler Ross, author of On Death and Dying, it's inconceivable for us to imagine an ending to our lives. If our lives must end, the ending must be a malicious obstruction from the outside world. In other words, the only way we can die is if we're killed. So death has been associated with evil. Rather than passing to the promised land, we're stuck in a freezer, drained of our blood, and either shut up in a box in the ground or burnt to a crisp. This is hardly flattering treatment for a body once full of life. Religion promises a spiritual life after death but our fate in that life depends on how morally we live this one. So the fear of an eternal Hell (and more so, of going there) exists, along with the fear of no afterlife at all. Christians that condemn Halloween condone a faithful God fearing life, not doubting the existence of our benevolent God. But faith is born by overcoming doubts, and doubts are natural in the stages of child and adult maturation. If we are to someday place our belief in religion it cannot be before we test some primary ideas about life and death. This opens up the gateway for mortal secular fear.

Death was once easier than it is now. The dying died at home. Funerals were held in the deceased home. In wasn't uncommon for a person to have been born, birthed children, and died in the same bed. But as society modernized, hospitals began caring for the dying. Death has become more mechanical, more a question of plugs and needles like we're secular machines without souls. Funeral homes have taken the dead from the home. As Kubler-Ross notes on page 5 of her book, these practices has dehumanized death, making it more gruesome than it once was. Science and technology can maintain the illusion of conquering death. Strengthening this fallacy is the increase in life-span in only a century's time. In 1780's England the life expectancy was only 30 years. We've almost tripled that but we've yet to find a cure for death. Instead of addressing our fears of death, we're prolonging them with our lengthened mortality.

The topic of death is so taboo that some even refuse to discuss their own funeral arrangements, and others refuse to listen when they do, as if merely speaking of death will invite it. But death is still important to us all. We all die, yet in spite of that convincing statistic, silence insulates us from responding to our impending demise. We're scared of being scared. As a result, our fears continue, unaddressed, unconquered, mounting as we age to near our demise.

Another reason we fear death is because it is unknown. "The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown," says H.P Lovecraft and he should know. The uncertainties that are stapled to our death certificate leave us with a feeling of insignificance. We don't know when or how death with strike or what will happen to our families. We don't even know for certain if we'll be around to feel insignificant. But if we are some fear not being remembered after we die. This is the fear of a life not worth its struggles, a life better if not lived at all.

In A History of Man's Obsessions and Fears, Robert Wilkins writes: "In the fashion of the times, our lives will be condensed into a name, a date of birth, a date of death, and a number for the cemetery staff to identify the site in their register. Chances are very high that our memorial will be similar to those on either side: made of the same material, of the same design and shape, with the same lettering."

This passage describes the descending significance of life after death. Our graves are lined in straight rows, dug by similar shovels or backhoes. Such conformity threatens many, and even more does the fact that we have no choice to conform after death. The mere idea that we won't be alive one hundred years from now and those that are alive will have never known us is quite disturbing because it magnifies our insignificance. This fear of being forgotten is due to profound anxieties that relate to feelings of self importance. We all feel the need to seem important to those around us, and if we are reduced to the contents of a grave that looks like everyone else's, our need to feel important even after death isn't fulfilled.

Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, believed that there was a normal human attraction to death. This attraction may result from feelings of inferiority. Alfred Ader believed we suffer from such feelings because in our initial childhood stages of development, we're small and weak. Or our attraction to death might arise from our natural fear of it. However, one's interest in death doesn't constitute suicidal tendencies or an unintentional death wish. Quite the contrary, someone might begin by fearing it so much that they face that fear to conquer it. Being familiar with that which scares us can lead to better security in life. Halloween is a wholesome way to respond to our attraction to death and to deal with such fears of it. It helps us deal with our fear of death in the way it mocks the very horror that's meant to scare us. Think of the history of Halloween. Villagers dressed in costumes so the evil spirits wouldn't recognize them as living. This self defense method isn't much unlike the act of playing dead in the presence of a killer. We play dead in this way in order to escape death, so the "death" we become temporarily isn't really death at all. Instead, it's a way of prolonging our appreciated life. By glorifying and emulating death, we protect ourselves from it, crippling our fear of it. Halloween doesn't condone evil, it condemns it. Halloween becomes more than just a tool to address our fears, but also an opportunity to diminish them. We feel empowered when we discover our courage. As children we feel significant in our triumphs over our literal fears of the dark. As adults, we're able to live our lives more fully. Halloween can teach us that very important lesson: that life is better than death. If we were without it, we wouldn't have an outlet for uneasy ideas about our own insecure mortality. We can't escape death, but we can escape our fear of it.

Let us trick-or-treat;

for to morrow we die.

Works Cited

Holy Bible. The Cambridge University Press. London.

Ross, Elisabeth Kubler Ross: On Death and Dying. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co. 1969.

Wilkins, Robert. Death: A History of Man's Obsessions and Fears. New York: Barnes and Nobel, 1990.