The Skeletons in Our Yards

In our little town, there are a few houses that go all-out when it comes to Halloween decor. One house features a skeleton nearly as tall as their house. Given it's size (and difficulty to tear down) they leave it up year-round and dress it in different attire depending on the season.

That house is about two blocks from my church. There's another house, two blocks the other direction, that also takes the "spookiness" of the season to the next level. A giant witch stewing a cauldron. A massive skeleton, much like the one at the other house, a grim reaper, and a mock "grave yard" with pithy epithets on the gravestones meant to elicit a chuckle.

And yet, possibly unbeknownst to them, some of these decorations bear some resemblance to one of the oldest Christian devotions/disciplines in Christian history.

For centuries, monks kept a skull on their desks, or on the middle of the tables where they gathered to eat. A lot of old art features hourglasses and wilting flowers. These all served a similar purpose. Those monks were not obsessed with the macabre. They were focused on reality. The phrase that named this practice was Latin: memento mori, “remember that you will die.”

The difference between them and most of us on Halloween is that the monks looked at "death" and really reflected on it, they did not trivialize it.

So, it's that time of year again. Scroll through any social media platform and I'm guessing you'll find Christians debating about whether it's appropriate to observe Halloween.

I am not going to tell anyone what to do. But I do think the day deserves more thought than we usually give it, because behind the costumes, the bobbing for apples, and all the candy, is a question the Scriptures press on us constantly: what will you do with the fact that your life will end?

Often, evangelists will ask, "If you died today, where would you go?" I'd like to ask another question, if you knew you were going to die today, how would that change how you live?

"So teach us to count our days that we may gain a wise heart" (Psalm 90:12).

This is not death-avoidance. The psalmist bids us to actually count our days, and in that, he says we might gain wisdom. A "wise heart" puts life into perspective, precisely because it recognizes that life is fleeting.

Ecclesiastes says it similarly: "It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting; for this is the end of everyone, and the living will lay it to heart" (Ecclesiastes 7:2).

The house of mourning teaches what we usually try not to think about or ignore entirely when dwelling in the the house of feasting.

Saint Benedict understood this. In the fourth chapter of his Rule, among instructions on charity and honesty, he includes a startling line: “Keep death daily before your eyes” (Rule of St. Benedict 4:47).

He did not mean we should have some kind of depressing, obsessive, brooding attitude about our mortality. He meant that we should maintain clarity about the purpose of our lives. Numbering our days, that earthly life is a limited resource, leads us to consider how much of our time we're wasting on trivialities. On holding grudges. On accumulating possessions. On distracting ourselves just to "pass the time."

If we truly number our days, we'll forgive more readily, we'll pray more honestly. We'll love the people in front of us because, well, we don't know when the next time is (if ever) we'll have that opportunity.

So, in light of this, I think it's worth at least outlining a few cautions about Halloween.

The first is that the season tends to trivialize evil. The occult isn't a costume. Death isn't a punchline. It's not cute when it comes walking up to your door asking for your candy—it demands more than candy. Scripture treats real evil, like the occult, with utmost seriousness. It does not make a "joke" out of death just so we can laugh about it without really considering our own.

The second is that genuine evil does occur on this day, and we should not be naive about that. I'm not going to go into details, but human sacrifices still happen (homeless people turn up missing every year, and very few of us notice). I'm not going to say definitively why this happens, but you can connect the dots.

The third caution is the one I want to dig into a little more: the holiday can distract us from what the date actually is.

“Halloween” is a contraction of “All Hallows’ Eve,” the night before All Saints’ Day. The eve exists for the feast, not the other way around.

On November 1, Christians across the world remember the “hallowed ones,” those in whom God’s grace brought them to the completion of their earthly lives, and completed its course in heaven. I'm not just talking about the famous saints, but they're certainly included. It's also a day to remember your grandmother, your loved ones who've entered glory, and to give thanks to God for the work He did in their lives.

"Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his faithful ones" (Psalm 116:15).

This also connects to memento mori. The saints remembered they would die, and how did they spend their lives? How did they conform their lives to the image of Christ, both in death and in life?

Remembering them is not honoring human beings for their own sake. It is honoring the Artist who made them and formed them, chiseled them, into masterpieces of His glory.

Paul puts it beautifully: "For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life" (Ephesians 2:10).

The Greek word behind “what he has made us” is poiēma, the root of our word “poem.”

We are God’s craftsmanship, his composition, his sculptures.

Consider a great artist, like Michelangelo. We would not truly honor him if we dismissed his David, his Pietà, or the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The best way to honor an artist is to appreciate his art. So to honor God, we do well to honor the work he has done in human lives. They are among His greatest masterpieces.

This is why the writer of Hebrews, after listing a long roll call of the faithful dead, turns their example of faith into an exhortation: "Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us" (Hebrews 12:1).

The dead who died in faith are not a morbid memory. They are a stadium full of encouragement, and they surround us still! It makes me think, often, of the retired NFL player who attends the game to watch current players complete in what used to be his career. But this is not the NFL. This is a stadium that requires no public funding. It is a stadium bought and paid for by Christ, and in Him, we remain participants in the same adventure, a singular life in His life.

On account of Christ, we can remember death without becoming either macabre or fearful: "Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?" (1 Corinthians 15:55).

Memento mori is not the skull alone. It is the skull beside the empty tomb. We remember that we will die so that we remember whose we are; so that we live now the way we will wish we had lived in the end.

There is nothing essentially wrong with costumes, and less so when they are benign. There's a qualitative difference between dressing like something objectively evil and dressing up like Spiderman or Buzz Lightyear.

Still, I think even this practice should give us some pause.

When we hand our children cultural heroes to emulate and never introduce them to the saints, what are we teaching them is the kind of "heroic" life worth emulating? I don't know about you, but when I was a kid I used to pray that God would give me the powers of Superman. And I often dressed as Superman for Halloween. I had fun, not going to lie.

But in some ways, my desire to be like Superman, also led to a view on life that thought I needed to be a hero like that, I needed to leap tall buildings in order to do something that mattered. I wonder, sometimes, if I'd grown on sanctity much younger if, instead of Superman, I'd asked God to make me more like St. Paul, or Peter, or John. What if I'd grown up seeing heroes like St. Therese, or Thomas Aquinas, or any of the innumerable martyrs, as the real examples of heroism that I wanted to emulate, that I wanted to 'dress' my life like?

So in our family we do not celebrate “Halloween” the way most of the world around us does, but at the same time, we don't want to give our kids the impression that the faith is devoid of "fun." So, we we make the day even more exciting. Yes, there is candy. But we celebrate real heroes, real masterpieces of God’s grace, and we hope those masterpieces inspire our children to become saints themselves, new works from the same Artist’s hand.

How might you practice this? As I said, I'm not going to decide the "debate" about whether Halloween is acceptable for Christians or not. I've given you some thoughts to consider, and here are a few things you might do regardless of how much/little you participate in such cultural festivities.

First, regularly take the time in honest reflection on your own mortality. Not anxiously, but prayerfully. Ask what you would change if you knew your days were few, and then change one thing now, because it's just honest to recognize—our days might be few.

Second, name a “hallowed one” from your own life, someone whose faith shaped yours, and tell their story to someone younger. Thank God aloud for the work he did in their lives. This can be the story of the life of a well-known canonized saint, or it can be the story of your grandfather. Either way, it's worth recognizing that God's greatest works did not end when the New Testament was done being written. God is still chiseling away at blocks of stone and fashioning beautiful masterpieces out of human lives.

Third, discover the story of some hero of the faith, a saint, and read their lives, or listen to a dramatization of their lives (I recommend the SAINTS ALIVE PODCAST, it's fantastic). In some way, introduce yourself to one story of how God has worked in someone's life, and ask... how is God working in mine? Is there anything in their piety, their faith, that I could make my own?

The skeletons in the yards might mean a lot of things. But, perhaps, if you see one, think not about how impressive their spooky decor is. Think instead something deeper: I'm going to die, someday, too. Face it honestly, and allow that reflection to change how you live today. The question is whether we will let that truth make us wise, and whether our lives will become, by grace, something worth remembering.