a "reflection" published January 1998
Two decades ago, if someone were aiming to satirize, say, the World Council of Churches, he might have written something like this: Yesterday, after meeting to provide aid to Marxist guerrillas in central Africa, the board of the WCC took time off to join an interfaith fellowship with two covens of witches. The consensus of the meeting — at which all participants gathered in a circle and held hands — was to declare Halloween a religious holiday, and thus inappropriate for observance in public schools.
These days, of course, African guerrillas are out of fashion — though African gorillas are an appropriate object for ecumenical support. But the fantasy of an interfaith meeting with witches is no longer satire: it is the kind of thing that churches belonging to the World Council of Churches are apt to organize.
Indeed, during Halloween week, a local paper reported on one such meeting in Kitsap Couny, Washington, handholding and all. The witches who participated in this Interfaith Alliance seemed ebullient — they had gained some respect from the mavens of liberal Christendom. All spoke high-mindedly of the separation of church and state, and the organizer of the event (a minister of the local outlet for the United Church of Christ) appealed for a oneness that enables us to develop a world that reflects a life that is intended.
I commend this dedication to the separation of church and state. But I wonder: once the druids and practitioners of Wicca
gain enough respect, will they continue to uphold the wall between them and political power? I see the future, as if in a crystal ball, archly: the united churches of Jesus and
Satan and Yahweh and Allah all hold hands it the public trough, taking tax funds from the citizenry distributing these funds to the churches/covens/synagogues/mosques by percentage of registered parishioners/acolytes/what-have-yous.
And in all this the true nature of pagan events like Halloween gets lost. It's a time to dress up, wear masks, pretend to be evil
or dangerous
or beautiful
for the hell of it. And the hell of it has little to do with Hell, or with a day where the veil of consciousness separating the living and the dead is at its thinnest,
and a whole lot to do with the imp of the reverse: Halloween is the other side of the coin of civilization, which constantly demands that we behave well.
And so once a year we pretend to behave ill.
It is all pretense, and mostly harmless. Halloween is as American as the Fourth of July, and as religious as the Easter Bunny. It is commercial, sportive, and one of the few cultural events left for children to play it up in a big way, and where adults must watch.
It's a pity that some adults are holding hands aiming to take Halloween away from the kids, and give it to the devout — even while mouthing the shibboleths of freedom.
Liberty, Vol. 11, No. 3
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