My aunt– not one of the mean ones– said she looked forward to Halloween every year.
She lived in a well-to-do neighborhood, in a nice house facing the park. It was one of the prettiest well-to-do neighborhoods of the city, perfect for walking on an Autumn evening, but it was near downtown and bordered closely by several poor neighborhoods. On Halloween, hundreds of families would come up to the fancy neighborhood, so their children could trick or treat.
I’ve heard that some well-to-do people in fancy neighborhoods resent it when an army of poorer children comes to them on Halloween, as if trick or treating should always be only for close neighbors and the poor ought to stay in their own part of town. But the people in this neighborhood loved it. They welcomed all the new children. Every year, they’d fix up their porches in the most lavish way, a friendly competition to have the most jack-o-lanterns and the silliest porch display. All four city blocks surrounding the beautiful park twinkled with orange lights. And then they’d hand out all the treats they could.
One year, my aunt got the idea of handing out packets of hot chocolate mix instead of candy, because it sounded so nice to warm up with a hot chocolate while inventorying your candy on a late October evening. She bought boxes and boxes of hot chocolate mix, but it wasn’t enough. She kept answering the door, admiring the costumes, and dropping a packet in each bag; the children were excited at the novelty of Halloween hot chocolate, and thanked her earnestly. But the boxes dwindled down to nothing and the trick-or-treaters kept coming. When she finally ran out of hot chocolate, she handed everybody a pencil from the box of pencils on her desk. Again, the children liked that. It’s fun to have a solid item like a pencil in among all the sugar that’s here today and eaten tomorrow. And then she ran out of pencils. She opened her purse and started giving everybody a quarter– this was back in the days when all the parking meters in town wanted a quarter, so she had plenty. Again, the children thought this was fun. Who doesn’t want a quarter? But then there were no more quarters.
When my uncle caught her handing out cans of soup, because there was no other small cheap treat in the house to give away except soup, he said “I think we’re done for the night” and turned off the porch light.
She still passes out hot chocolate every year, and she still never has quite enough, no matter how much she stocks up.
I always liked that story.
My Charismatic Catholic family went through a phase of thinking Halloween was of the devil; I’ve written about that quite a lot. Of course I’ve expressed the opinion that it’s harmless fun. But maybe I didn’t go far enough. Maybe Halloween is sacred– not because it’s the eve of All Hallows, but because it’s a day where you have to be hospitable to every strange being who comes to you. Here comes an army of odd little people you may or may not know. They might be from your community or they might be strangers. They’re wearing masks so you can’t tell who they are. They look like demons and undead and aliens and mutants, black cats and dinosaurs and bloodthirsty pirates. And instead of locking the door or chasing them off, you decorate the porch to show them that they’re welcome, and you praise their appearance, and you give them treats.
What a beautiful way to honor the vigil of All Saints’ Day: welcome strangers, and give them something good, expecting nothing in return except that they’ll be happy.
That’s more than just harmless. That’s saintly.
Maybe we can take that special sanctity with us into the rest of the year.
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