I Really Hate Halloween

I really hate Halloween. Yes I have said it. I hate the taunting of and reveling in all that is dark. I hate walking around the neighborhood and seeing front porch zombies and ghouls. I recoil at the sight of pseudo graveyards in neighbors’ lawns.  It makes me wonder why this need to laugh in the face of the coming winter, why this need to play at death? Where has the hope and joy of Easter gone, will we make it to the humble awe of Christmas? This foreign holiday falls in the season when I remember my sons death, when it is all I can do to cling to gratitude for life and rest in salvation.

October 30th is Joshua’s birthday, the day I spent preparing to meet his new life. Him born a few minutes before midnight, I spent October 31st coming to grips with his death. Home from the hospital with empty arms, my sons pranced through the neighborhood – little Spidermen. Finally I fell asleep to be awoken by ghoulish moans and screams. Someone’s Halloween party soundtrack broadcasted on loudspeakers. I paced and sobbed and questioned where God was and why this world so broken, this darkness so heavy?

The next year I dreaded Halloween. I blessed God and remembered my boy’s birthday the day before as a new baby filled my arms. But oh I dreaded Halloween after a month of shielding eyes from devilish party store decorations. But God was there, bringing innocent magic, my boys dressed as superheroes once again. They ran clothed in all they wish and hope to be. Able to do anything, conquer all, bedecked in strength and fantasy. And I remembered a time when I didn’t know of the heavy pressing darkness, when I saw beauty instead of brokenness.

Again this year I struggled through an onslaught as summer faded and the nights grew long. A month of dreading, I grasped to hold my children close and rejoice in their little lives. Through sorrow and fear He was faithful once again. A day of celebrating the harvest season, a night of playful magic with my boys, dragons and a homemade hawk. The heaviness lifted and Thanksgiving time had come, now on to Advent.

This is His gift when we see the blackness threatening. He gives us myth and story, unseen glory more real than anything we can hold. Never content to leave us in this wasted place, He speaks of spring and promises new life. Christmas is here in the dead of winter. All seems to be hopeless and bleak, will we make it through? The world a wild and hostile place, his creation reveling in depravity, shrinking from his presence.

In this dark place, this cold harsh season he knits a family together, sneaks into the world he has made, born in a cave. Stooping to not only hold but enter humanity he lights the hearth fires, giving us a warm home to return to. The ugliness does not win! We wait for Christ and he does not disappoint. He takes all that is horrid upon Himself, heartbroken more than we could ever know. And we are given gifts, priceless as a child’s dancing smile . . .