Halloween. We’re home. There was a fractious air in the village tonight; a sort of restlessness, so we decided to drive through and do a little praying.
Youths in black were congregating. Parents were holding the hands of sparkly children with bright orange buckets. Others were out too, strolling between pumpkin-lit houses and teenagers on bikes. I really hope there wasn’t the kind of trouble we had a few years ago.
But that’s the thing with Halloween. There really is a thinness to the air, a translucence between good and evil. All too easily the darkness seeps through, all too quickly the fun turns to teenagers throwing fireworks into the Co-Op, and I don’t like the idea that we might have accidentally welcomed it.
Meanwhile in 1517, Martin Luther’s nailing his 95 theses to the door of Wittenberg Cathedral on a Halloween night. That kickstarted the Protestant reformation of course, and has led indirectly to church lunches where everyone accidentally brings a quiche.
It also led to the dissolution of the monasteries, a bragadicious Henry VIII and a world in which Christians can be justified by faith rather than paying a priest for an easy ride through Purgatory. So you know, swings and roundabouts to All Hallow’s Eve. Swings and roundabouts.
Sainsbury’s was suitably empty while all this trick or treating was going on. We ended up there, getting a few bits in after being away for a week. I was intrigued to see the staff dismantling the Halloween decorations.
Cardboard spooky castles were being folded up and orange shelves of cobwebbed fare had been swept clear, ready for whatever might be next. Pumpkin sweets and unsold chocolates were discounted, and some were cynically being relabelled to a more festive-minded purpose. A board was up with the words ‘Santa’s Coming…’ on it.
What would Martin Luther have made of it? Father Christmas, an old Catholic Saint, Nicholas, being venerated as a kindly old wizard who drops gifts down the chimney? And in the fading hours of October? Fetch the quill. Thesis 96 isn’t going to write itself.
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