How to think about Halloween as a Catholic

By SIMCHA FISHER in CERC

How delightful it is to be Catholic, when so few things are forbidden — so few things are out of the question....

People are attracted to spooky stuff for a reason — that God made us so that we enjoy small doses of peril and tension, because it prepares us to deal with the real thing, which will surely come along sooner or later. (This is where the adorable and extremely relevant, but adorable fighting kitties comes in.) So as long as we don't spend our lives wallowing in gore and ghoulishness, it's healthy and normal and perfectly fine to indulge in a little dramatic scaring and screaming from time to time. Therefore, spooky Halloween stuff? A-OK.

[This] reminds me of something my sister once pointed out: that when Daddy tosses the baby up in the air and baby laughs, it's because there really is a joke there, albeit a very simple one. The situation says, "You're in danger!" but the baby knows, "But it's Daddy! I'm fine!" See? Funny stuff right there, if you're a baby. And a pretty good analogy for the delightfully childlike question, "If God is for us, who can be against us?" Whee! There's yet a third answer to the question of whether creepy, gory costumes and other Halloweeny practices (or scary stuff in general) are appropriate for Catholics to indulge in: some Catholics argue, "This isn't just a little holiday from the somber demands of my Faith — it's actually my way of laughing at the devil! I'm spitting in ol' Nick's eye and reaffirming the truth of the triumph of the Resurrection when I . . . um. . . buy this rubber mask of a clown with an axe splitting his forehead open. See? Ad majorem dei gloriam! Wooooooooooooooo!" I used to roll my eyes over these rather contrived arguments, thinking, "Gee whiz, just admit that you want to have fun sometimes, and stop trying to make some big religious deal out of everything."

But honestly, now I think that even overthinking it can be a perfectly legitimate Catholic approach, if that's what appeals to you.

And also legitimate is yet a fourth approach: skipping Halloween altogether, because it just doesn't seem right.

Because that's the nice part about being a Catholic: as long as we're living our lives in a way that is pleasing to God, we can either be practical and science-based, or we can be analytical and deliberate, or we can be cautious and guarded, or we can be giggling babies.

Read the rest here: http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/facts/fm0163.htm