All Hallows’ Eve 🎃

Over the past few years Halloween has become a much bigger affair / festival … a great opportunity for retail and grocery sales to peak, with ideas brought in that bear very little resemblance to the reason as to why this named day actually exists! 

The often hideous displays of horror and death which take to the streets and cackle at corners during Halloween may be done in jest and for ‘fun’, but in reality there is very little to be mocked or joked about when considering the Samhain festival which many link to the current day. There are many connections and suggestions as to how we have got to where we are today, but one thing they all have in common is the acknowledgment of the dead and of darkness on the eve before the 1st November which is All Saints Day … a day to acknowledge good and light. How come we don’t celebrate that day with as much aplomb and expenditure?! Maybe we should get all of our children up early to go round the streets dressed as saints and light, collecting donations for victims of human trafficking and slavery! 

I hope you can manage to read the following poem which is a great one to save and read at this time each year:

Vast armies undead do tread through the night and
In hordes march towards hapless victims to frighten.
They stumble in step with glass-eyes on the prizes;
Bunched hither, hunched over in monstrous disguises;
In sizes not lofty but numb’ring a throng;
To unleash on their prey the dreaded DING DONG.
Small faces with traces of mother’s eye-liner,
Peer up to the resident candy provider.

And there to intone ancient threats learnt verbatim;
They lisp “TRICK OR TREAT!” Tis their stark ultimatum.
Thus: region by region such legions take plunder.
Does this spector-full spectacle cause you to wonder?
Just how did our fair festive forebears conceive,
Of this primeval practice called All Hallows Eve?
The answer, if anyone cares to research,
Surprises, it rises from old mother church.

On the cusp of the customary All Saints Day
The Christ-i-an kinsfolk made mocking display.
These children of light both to tease and deride;
Don darkness, doll down as the sinister side.
In pre-post-er-ous pageants and dress diabolic,
They hand to the damned just one final frolick.
You see with the light of the dawn on the morrow,
The sunrise will swallow such darkness and sorrow.

The future is futile for forces of evil;
And so they did scorn them in times Medieval.
For this is the nature of shadow and gloom;
In the gleaming of glory there can be no room.
What force is resourced by the echoing black?
When the brightness ignites can the shadow push back?
These ‘powers’ of darkness, if such can be called,
Are banished by brilliance, by blazing enthralled.

So the bible begins with this fore-resolved fight;
For a moment the darkness…. then “Let there be Light!”
First grief in the gloom, then joy from the East.
First valley of shadow, then mountaintop feast.
First wait for Messiah, then long-promised Dawn.
First desolate Friday and then Easter Morn.
The armies of darkness when doing their worst,
Can never extinguish this Dazzling Sunburst.

So… ridicule rogues if you must play a role;
But beware getting lost in that bottomless hole.
The triumph is not with the forces of night.
It dawned with the One who said “I am the Light!”

I’m resolved to teach my children some balance so that if they wish to join in some of the more harmless activities of Halloween, then they must indeed appreciate the dawn of the next day … the true light who came to dispel the darkness and to conquer death. There is no victory for death when the light of Christ takes up residence in our hearts … and hallelujah nothing can separate us from this love and light (John 8v12; 1 Cor 15v54-55; Romans 8v35-39).

Ingrid x