The blight of tacky Halloween decorations

Each year, the month of October brings debates among Christians over Halloween. Is it the devil’s holiday? Perhaps it’s actually a surprisingly Christian celebration after all. But these worn-over debates can easily distract us from one of the more obnoxious forms of American cultural decline confronting us today: the new annual blight of tacky yard decorations. Now that Halloween has passed, it should afford us the opportunity to revisit some assumptions.

Fall ought to be one of the most naturally gorgeous seasons of the year. Walking through the neighborhood, a person might be treated to the beauty of blazing autumn leaves and the rustic dignity of overgrown squash and knotty ornamental gourds. But more and more, the harvest scenery is marred by ghosts dancing in the air, mannequins in Scream masks, and blood-spangled hands reaching out from all manner of containments: the lawn, the front door, the back hatch of the Honda Odyssey. Now, don’t get me wrong. I am not “shocked” by this. I don’t find it to be daring or iconoclastic. It’s far less impressive than all that. No, mostly, it’s just ugly.

This is not just a cranky (albeit correct) aesthetic judgment. Our embrace of spooky bric-a-brac indicates a decreasing ability to ponder the sublime. With the old agrarian seasonal cycle, we are confronted with the reality of death. The brilliant oranges, reds, and yellows are the last blast before the leaves drop for the year. The bare stalks are enduring symbols of harvest. The days are getting shorter. The grass has withered and the flowers faded weeks ago.

The older supernatural expressions of this time of year had this same connection. The skulls of yore were not just generically scary; they were symbols of mortality. Halloween was the eve of All Hallows, a time to consider the faithful departed. It certainly had its share of corruptions. Indeed, those very corruptions made Oct. 31 a fitting day for Martin Luther to begin challenging the sale of indulgences and, indeed, the larger connected system of purgatory. Still, Halloween was chiefly a time for Christians to consider the reality of death, the last judgment, and the hope of a life after this one, the glory of the resurrection of the body in and through Jesus Christ, the Lord of life and conqueror of death.

Even if you don’t care for some of the older Christian art forms and expressions around this time of year, you could never call them kitsch. Medieval macabre was disturbing because it was meant to be. Death is awe-ful. It is a reality that we naturally fear, and the threat of an endless death is indeed one appropriate means of evangelism. Unless you repent, you too will all perish (Luke 13:3).

In fact, the commercialization of Halloween has made death a lot less scary. Cartoon gore doesn’t really suggest a deep fear of death but instead a ubiquitous sense of levity. Instead of true agony and suffering, the bloody knives are a gag. The whole point is that we aren’t supposed to take dying seriously.

There’s no obvious message of salvation here, either. Jason Vorhees always comes back. The Saw franchise is about to release its 11th movie. Rather than lifting our hearts up to an eternal hope, today’s horror genre has us rooting for the bad guy and buying more popcorn.

Though I have heard of Christians trying, I don’t think there is some secret twist that redeems this situation as it currently stands. Rather, I think we are seeing a basic cultural alienation from real death itself. Having long ago lost acquaintance with the cycle of life and death on a farm and having now clinicalized and privatized human dying at the end of life, most of us have simply forgotten the true experience. And it’s being replaced by a cheap and inflatable imitation. Despite the Styrofoam gravestones, truly grave thoughts are harder and harder to find. Silliness, rather than sobriety, is the best we can do.

Our world has lost both grace and nature. All it’s got left is plastic.

I don’t suppose I should leave you with precise instructions on how to decorate your yard next year. That’s still up to you to decide. But I hope that you will give some thought to the bigger conversation we should be having—a conversation that we once were having—about the changing of the times. Halloween, and the fall season more broadly, could be a great opportunity. Christians could challenge our culture in a profound way, simply by declining to turn our yards into bad horror movie sets. We should uphold a standard of beauty. And when we choose to use ugliness, we should make it count.

Christians should use this time of year to make people aware of death, but let’s make sure it’s the real thing. Don’t deny it. Don’t satirize it. Instead, let’s calmly and courageously explain what it actually is. When we tell the world the true story about life and death, we might just find ourselves in a position to tell them the true story of life after death.