In Good Faith: Day after Day

In the November edition of my In Good Faith column I write about the post-holiday blahs, the tradition of keeping vigil, and the potential for stale Halloween candy.

Day After Day

Be honest. Do you have any leftover Halloween candy or have you eaten it all by now? Your

answer likely depends on whether or not you have children in the Halloween-obsessed zone and just how stealthy you are about “reapportioning” some of the bounty.

But even for those of us who don’t get many trick-or-treaters (no sidewalk, live next door to a church) or who have children past the dress-up age, you still must be prepared. Which involves buying a few bags of your favorite candy — just in case. “Oh, rats, there’s just so much leftover candy. Well, I wouldn’t want it to go to waste…”

We don’t often think about the day after holidays. We’re big on eves, of course. Christmas Eve, New Year’s Eve, All Hallow’s Eve (aka Halloween — the night before All Saints’ Day). The word itself derives from “evening” and thus the evening before a big holiday is full of anticipation.

In the Christian tradition, the concept of keeping vigil the night before a major holy day runs deep. It is a time to wait, watch, prepare, and pray for the celebration that is to come. In the early church, the all-night liturgy that preceded day break on Easter morning was the most sacred ritual of the year and the Easter Vigil remains the most ancient of Christian liturgical rites. If you expand the idea, you could argue that the entire seasons of Advent and Lent are like extended “eves” before Christmas and Easter. 

Yet for as much emphasis as we have traditionally put on vigils and eves, we don’t think much about the day after a big holiday.

Well, that’s not entirely true. There is Boxing Day, which is celebrated in England, Canada, and other parts of the former British empire, on the day after Christmas. 

In the Middle Ages, it was the day when a church’s alms box was opened so the contents could be distributed to the poor. It was also traditional that servants got the day off to celebrate Christmas with their families — since they all had to work on the actual holiday itself. 

In modern America, since we don’t tend to have servants, “boxing day” might refer to either cleaning up all the boxes from the absurd over-abundance of Christmas gifts or the fights we get into with our dysfunctional families over the holidays. 

Boxing Day aside, little thought is given to the day after holidays. I know on December 26th I generally feel like I’ve been hit over the head by a giant candy cane. But that’s more a function of having led a slew of church services in the preceding 24 hours.

I do wish we collectively put at least a modicum of emphasis on the day after a major holiday. It’s probably enough to take a few minutes to pause and reflect upon the greater meaning of the day; to sit in the warm glow of shared memories for a moment; to contemplate the unique traditions inherent in our most beloved celebrations.

But all of this can wait. In the meantime, I have some candy corn to attend to. I wouldn’t want them to get stale.

In Good Faith: Not-So-Spooky

At St. John's this year we took a crazy idea and turned it into ministry. In a special bonus edition of my monthly In Good Faith column, I share how the St. John's Not-So-Spooky Haunted House came to be. [Check out some pictures on the NSSHS Facebook page]

Not-So-Spooky

Last weekend we debuted our St. John’s Not-So-Spooky Haunted House. We had no idea what to expect, really. The whole thing started when a parishioner approached me about a “crazy idea.” Now, usually when this happens, I nod my head, say something like “Hmmm. Sounds…interesting,” and hope the person gets distracted and forgets about it.

But I was intrigued when Dan Fickes started laying out his vision for a family-friendly Halloween event at the parish. While he and his family are relatively new to Hingham, I’ve known Dan to be a creative and generous guy — he owns a video production company and recently put together a video highlighting our Sunday School program. He’s also, as I like to call him, something of a “Halloween savant.” He’s set up major displays in Boston and his excitement around the subject is contagious.

Soon enough, I was sucked into his All Hallows’ vortex and we had organized a small team

to plot and plan ways to pull off a large-scale community event. There were logistical issues with recruiting an army of volunteers, publicity, graphics, artwork, Halloween-themed crafts, and food. But Dan’s primary focus was the haunt itself. And he personally put in 50 hours to turn the church basement (a spooky place to begin with!) into an enchanting, interactive exhibit intended to delight and entertain young children.

What he created was pure magic. Visitors meet Freddy the Friendly Ghost, who greets everyone in his library and walks them through his little world, which includes a haunted dance party and a   haunted pet shop. There’s also a black light tunnel, an enchanted graveyard with a Haunted Mansion-like bust which sings a catchy Halloween song. The haunt ends with all the children getting a special pair of “Spooky Specs” which enables them to see all the fun in the Hallway of Holograms before going back up to the non-spirit world for donuts, apple cider, and crafts.

You could ask the question, “Why would a church host a haunted house? Isn’t that some sort of anti-Christian, pagan ritual?” And here’s where I got excited. Because there are actually deep religious roots embedded in the Halloween story. I mean, the whole reason Halloween even exists is that All Saints' Day is November 1st. Christians mock death by dressing up in costumes the night before we remember all those who have come before us in the faith. And this is at the heart of Christianity – that through his death on the cross Jesus has destroyed death. The essence of All Hallows’ Eve is that since death no longer has dominion over us, we can mock it. And, while this fact gets lost amid the Halloween displays at those temporary costume shops that pop up faster than Julian Edelman after a devastating tackle, we can also have a lot of fun in the process. 

In the end, we had about 800 joyful children and adults come through on our opening weekend. And if you missed it, the St. John’s Not-So-Spooky Haunted House continues this weekend on Friday and Saturday, October 28 and 29 from 5:00 to 7:30 pm. The suggested donation — which goes to support the ministries of the church — is $5 per person or $20 per family. 

I hope you’ll join us. We even promise not to scare the “bejesus” out of you!

Seriously? You want to go as a PRIEST for Halloween?

I've never worried much about identity theft. I mean, who would want to steal a priest's identity, right? Well, I may have to rethink that if Halloween costumes are any indication. There are an absurd number of clerical options for the would-be man or woman of the cloth. But mostly the man (read on).

Sure, I went as Father Mulcahy from MASH one year. That was easy enough. Having served in the Army, I just dipped into the Army-issue duffel bag full of old uniforms that sits in the bottom of my closet for no apparent reason and grabbed some camo pants and combat boots. Paired with a black clergy shirt and collar...voila!

And I've always fantasized about going as Father Guido Sarducci of Saturday Night Live Fame one year. If only I chain smoked.

But these are different. Some are fairly standard, some are racy, some are downright Papal, and some I can't even share.

You think I'm overstating things? Behold just a few examples of clergy costumes...

This guy seems to be a cross between Steven Colbert and one of the priests from The Excorcist. That giant pectoral cross would give any self-respecting bishop hives. Of course since this priest is not actually a bishop and shouldn't be wearing one, it would at least result in a firm dressing down from the aforementioned bishop.

This costume invokes the seal of the confessional. If I were to encounter this guy at a party, 

I'd have to "confess" that he looks like an idiot.

Okay, back off, stud. Stop looking at me like that and make sure my table reservation is in order.

Friar Tuck I presume? Either that or Donald Trump on a windy day.

That stole. It's shiny. And it belongs on the Bad Vestments blog.

Zombie priest. Or, how most of us look after Vestry meetings.

Ah, the walking Safe Church Violation.

What do you mean you wouldn't wish this vocation on a dog?

Oh, and while it's easy to find costumes for the "sexy nun" or "pregnant nun," there's pretty much nothing out there for the person who's pining to be a regular old female priest or pastor. If I were in the costume designing business, I'd suggest regular clericals with a broken stained glass window wrapped around her waist -- you know, the female priest who has shattered the "stained glass ceiling."

This is about as chaste as it gets. And whatever you do, don't google "sexy nun" on your work computer.

Not that any of this matters to me since I'll, once again, be going as a "Lay Person" for Halloween.

In Good Faith: Ghoulish Grin

In my latest In Good Faith column I write about Halloween and its Christian roots. Now pass the candy corn!

Ghoulish Grin

I have pumpkin carving issues. It’s gotten to the point where my family lets me carve the eyes, the nose, and the hole in the top but I’m not allowed to get within a Butterfinger’s length of the mouth. The scary grin is off limits because for the last couple of years I’ve mistakenly cut off the teeth and we’ve ended up with a toothless, geriatric Jack-O-Lantern. It’s not exactly spooky looking unless you’re hoping for a set of dentures in your Halloween candy bag or you have an irrational fear of Bart Simpson’s grandfather.

I actually like Halloween but I know some Christians don’t share my attitude -- something about it being satanic in nature. I think it’s a lot of fun and not just because free candy is the best kind. Plus how can you say something is evil with so many devilishly cute kids running around with such joy?

But beyond the mounds of candy corn and fake spider webs, All Hallow’s Eve has Christian roots and is thus a great teaching opportunity. The day we dress up and trick-or-treat is steeped in the ancient Christian feasts of All Saints’ and All Souls Day. There’s a great tradition of mocking death -- hence the ghoulish costumes -- as we stand in sure and certain hope of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

On All Saints’ Day (November 1) we remember the great saints of the church who have come before us in the faith and continue to inspire us -- those “Big S” saints like St. Francis and St. Mary. On All Souls Day (November 2) we remember those whom we have loved and lost in our own lives -- those “small s” saints like Uncle Frank and our sister Mary.

So whether you’re dressed up as Miley Cyrus or Ted Cruz, you’re participating in a ritual that transcends the surface plane of life, speaks to something deeper, and reminds us that we are all connected to one another in what Christians call the “communion of saints.” In other words, it’s mostly about our faith in God but the sugar high can’t help but contribute to the joy of the human-divine connection.

My boys are at the age where they’re torn between participating in a “childish” ritual and the allure of free candy. Whether they go out trick-or-treating on Halloween will likely be a game time decision based on what their friends are doing.

Unfortunately they’re now much too old for me to engage in one of the greatest scams going -- trick-or-treating with an infant. I remember my eldest son’s first Halloween – he was four months old. We put him in a homemade strawberry hat someone had given us and I dressed all in white; together we were strawberries and cream. People thought Ben was so cute (they ignored me) they would fill up his bag with candy. Of course, since he was too young to eat it, I was forced to keep it for myself which meant that I was literally stealing candy from a baby.

As for me, sometimes after the rush of trick-or-treaters dies down I stand in the doorway with my toothless Jack-O-Lantern burning bright, reflecting on what was behind all those costumes that traipsed up the front steps. If you took away the masks and hoods and dyed green hair you’d find something greatly resembling a saint. I don’t mean that the saints we honor in stained glass ever rubbed soap on car windows or engaged in other ghoulish pranks, but they were all human beings just like you and me. They weren’t super-human, they were simply super humans who put  their faith at the very center of their lives.

I hope you enjoy the festivities this year and avoid the house I best remember as a kid -- the neighborhood dentist who handed out toothbrushes instead of Twizzlers.

Rediscovering All Souls Day

Lost amid the post-Halloween sugar crash and the euphoria of All Saints’ Day, is the ancient Feast of All Souls Day. All Souls is like the forgotten and ignored middle child of the All Hallows Eve — All Saints’ — All Souls triumvirate. And that’s a shame.

One effect of this is that All Saints’ Day — and in particular All Saints’ Sunday (since people rarely get to church on the feast day itself) — has become a de facto All Saints’/All Souls celebration. We have so broadened the definition of a saint to include not just the martyrs and theologians of the early church, not just those who have demonstrated heroic faith in more contemporary times, but Uncle Harry. Uncle Harry may have been a swell guy — despite his unbearable political commentary at Thanksgiving dinner every year — but was he truly a saint?

I’m as guilty of this broadening as anyone. On All Saints’ Sunday we print up and read a necrology (fancy name for a list of dead people) as identified by parishioners. In this way we connect the great saints of the church to all the faithful departed whom we have known and loved and lost in our own day. There’s nothing wrong with this and there’s a whole lot right with this. But it marginalizes the day in the Church Year that is specifically set aside to honor these lesser known “saints” — All Souls Day.

Practically speaking, combining the two days makes sense. Even if you’re able to get a crowd out to your parish church on All Saints’ Day they likely won’t be coming back the next day for All Souls. And, yes, there are some wonderful Anglo-Catholic congregations that can pull this off, with full choir no less. Though I’d bet many of them have more people in the altar party than in the pews.

Many work with the combined All Saints’/All Souls approach by talking about Saints (capital “S”) and saints (lower case “s”). And this is a helpful clarifying tool. But I still think we miss something when we don’t separate these two concepts. The modern All Saints’ Sunday celebration holds the potential to dilute the impact of the great saintly heroes of the faith while subsequently elevating our own deceased loved ones to heights that would likely make them roll in their graves.

This combining for convenience actually has an earlier precedent. All Saints’ Day and All Souls Day were separate traditions in the church. The celebrations of regional saints became so complex over time that the church instituted a feast day for all of the saints in about 609. In the late tenth century, the Benedictine monks in Cluny moved the commemoration of the dead of their order to November 2, the day after All Saints’ Day. In the thirteenth century the Pope saw the wisdom of this and put this feast on the calendar of the entire Church so that All Saints’ and All Souls would be forever linked moving forward. At the time of Martin Luther, Reformers fused All Saints’ with All Souls and it was only relatively recently that the Anglican Church rediscovered the merit of marking both days. In the Episcopal Church calendar it is called both All Souls Day and the Commemoration of the Faithful Departed and was first included with the 1979 Book of Common Prayer.

The one place where All Souls Day is celebrated with great fervor is Central America. The Dia de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, is a day set aside for families to honor their ancestors. Home altars are set up with Christian symbols and icons along with pictures of friends and relatives who have died and a great celebration ensues that honors both the living and the dead.

And isn’t that really what this time in the Church calendar is all about? Because of Christ’s victory, the barrier between the living and the dead has been trampled down. “Whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s,” Paul writes to the Romans. Which means that we can celebrate life even in the context of death.

So rather than let All Souls Day continue to be buried (so to speak), I encourage you to embrace it; to remember your own loved ones who have left this mortal life. God loves them just as much as God loves us and just as much as those we honor as heroes of the faith.

I danced on a Friday and the sky turned black;
It’s hard to dance with the devil on your back;
They buried my body and they thought I’d gone,
But I am the dance and I still go on.

– From the hymn “Lord of the Dance”

All Hallow's to All Saints'

I was talking to a fifth grader in my neighborhood yesterday who was dressed up as a "Mardi Gras girl." It was a great costume -- wig, fancy mask, etc. If I saw her walking down Bourbon Street I wouldn't have batted an eye.

Just out of curiosity I asked her if she knew what Mardi Gras meant? She didn't, so I took a quick moment to give her the background. When I mentioned the Church's season of Lent she lit up and said "I've heard of that!" I didn't get into the concept of penitence and Jesus' wandering in the wilderness for 40 days and 40 nights but putting Mardi Gras into the context of the season before Easter resonated at least a little bit.

Every Halloween I start thinking about how much this "Christian nation" has lost the religious roots of its own holidays. For a country that prides itself on the percentage of people who believe in God, we're awfully forgetful sometimes. That's not to say only observant, liturgical Christians should celebrate on All Hallow's Eve. That would put a damper on the whole affair. But it would be nice if more people paid attention to the "why's" of such holidays. As with much of life, without context there's little meaning in anything we do.

In the case of Halloween, it exists only because it’s the night before the great Feast of All Saints’, the day Christians throughout the world remember the saints who have come before us in the faith. And this fact gets lost amid the Halloween displays at those temporary costume shops that pop up faster than Starbucks franchises.

In isolation, Halloween has no meaning – besides free candy and cute kids in ghoulish garb. Which is a fine thing in itself. And it’s all in good fun, unless your house gets egged.

But beyond the Twizzlers and Snickers Bars and zombie costumes, it’s a pretty empty experience unless it’s connected to something deeper. In other words, it’s all about context. We dress up in costumes to mock death; that’s the history of this practice. And it comes out of the bedrock belief of the Christian faith – that through his death on the cross Jesus has destroyed death. Death no longer has dominion over us, which means we can mock death because it has no power over us. That’s the essence of All Hallow's Eve.

Happy Halloween, everyone! Now go buy another roll of dental floss.