Why We Need to Really Celebrate Halloween (and How We Can Get More out of It)

I had a revelation recently. I haven’t really put a lot of time, thought, or energy into Halloween since I was a kid. I had pretty much chalked up Halloween to a day when people get to put on masks and costumes and pretend whatever they want to pretend.

My thinking has really taken a change recently, and I want to share a few of those thoughts with you here.

For one thing, there is a lot of resistance around Halloween from religious fundamentalists and other people who are afraid of the so-called “Powers of Darkness.” If you fall into this camp, “For the Love of God, let it go!” You’re giving way too much power to things that will not last. Resisting anything just makes it stronger and gives it more power. Instead, let’s choose to love Halloween for its potential gifts.

Here are a few of those gifts that I believe Halloween can give us if we choose to celebrate it intentionally:

1. Halloween is the most popular holiday dedicated to things like darkness, death, evil, fear, and other such things that people would rather not think about most of the time. Let’s really milk this season for everything it’s got. Instead of just playing around with the images of these deep dark shadows, let’s really explore them. Are they real? Are they powerful? Are they lasting? Where do they come from? What are the deeper messages and truths behind these things? What are the power and messages of love behind the scary masks of fear, evil, and death? What are the deeper and higher truths available to us on the other side of darkness?

2. Instead of playing at the whole fear thing and mostly avoiding it, let’s really go there-all the way. Let’s spend some time entertaining our darkest nightmares related to annihilation, abandonment, condemnation, despair, hopelessness, chaos, meaninglessness, absurdity, existential anxiety, and other such perceptions. Most of our persistent thoughts, feelings, and behaviors have been specifically developed unconsciously to help us avoid facing these kinds of fears. These patterns are commonly called addictions, distractions, or drama to name a few. Living out these unconscious patterns keeps us from facing the deeper and darker things we would rather not look upon. Until we really face them and bring them into the light, we will continue to be dominated by them whether we want to or not.

3. We could really look at the evils in the world and our lives and instead of bemoaning them, fearing them, resisting them, or other such unproductive activities, we could actually develop and implement plans for becoming better people, doing better things, telling more truth, giving more love, healing more people and realtionships, etc. During this season, we could recommit ourselves to do our best to serve the interests of light, love and goodness instead of the hungry shadows of fear and its many ugly stepchildren: sadness, anger, jealousy, lust, greed, despair, etc.

If we really face these kinds of issues directly during the Halloween season, we might discover that on the other side of these things we resist, avoid, deny, and suppress is a brighter more constant light, a more lasting tone of beauty, and a stronger and sweeter fragrance, than those of darkness, fear, and death.

Perhaps if we allowed ourselves to more fully explore the dark side of our individual and collective souls, even if for just one season each year, we could move that much closer to releasing the visible and invisible fears that keep us in chains, holding us back from the destinies for which our souls were created. In a world that is currently and temporarily ruled by fear, perhaps celebrating Halloween in this way could help us to dethrone this particular tyrant, leading us into a glorious and peaceful transition to a world where love reigns mightily within the hearts of all people.

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