What a Fabulous Opportunity to Talk About Something Completely Unrelated to Easter!

Christmas VS Halloween

There’s a common refrain you may have heard if you’ve been to enough evangelical church services. The phrase is something to the effect of “It doesn’t matter what you’ve done; Jesus loves you. It doesn’t matter how badly you’ve messed up in the past; you can turn back to God right now.”

Well each of those statements after the semicolon is true and each of those statements before the semicolon is true-ish.

In my observation, there seems to be a rising tide of apathy in the world. We see this in philosophies expressed in such phrases as “it is what it is,” “you live your truth; I’ll live mine,” “it’s all relative,” “it’s just gray area,” “it’s not the end of the world,” “what does it matter; we’re all gonna die anyway,” and even the common, but all so piercing confession, “I don’t care.”

If the church is not careful, we can be just one more voice that fosters this battle cry of defeatism, when we attempt to encourage others by saying “it doesn’t matter” about something they’ve done.

To say “it doesn’t matter” is true-ish only in the exaggerative sense. Similar to in Luke 14:26 (NASB), when Jesus said, ”If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his own father, mother, wife, children, brothers, sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple.”

We know from the rest of Jesus’ words and actions that this declaration can best be understood as an exaggeration to describe the difference in intensity of love one must have for Jesus, compared to the love one has for their immediate family. The difference must be so great that it’s “almost as if” you hate your family, compared to how much you love Jesus.

That being said, referring to someone’s past (good or bad) as something that “doesn’t matter” is only true in an exaggerated manner, compared to how much their future in Christ matters. You are not enslaved by your past, but you are shaped by it, so to say it doesn’t matter, might be missing part of what’s essential for the next steps in the journey of life.

And by now you’re probably thinking, “what on God’s green Earth does this have to do with Halloween and Christmas?”

Excellent question. Here’s my pitch:

In similar fashion to how our past matters in relation to our future—Halloween matters. It doesn’t matter as much as Christmas, but it is essential.

Now I know we’ve come a long way from the actual holy day of “All Hallows Eve,” to the horror/evil-obsessed candy extravaganza that Halloween has become in the 21st century. But I think there’s an important essence to Halloween that has survived throughout the centuries and that is delightfully juxtaposed to the essence of Christmas.

The essence of Christmas as a holiday (specific theology aside for a moment) is this—that God on high, came low to be a human infant. Christmas calls us higher. Through the life of Jesus, we see an example of what we could be, what we were made to be, and what we can be, in relationship with Him. We see His holiness and his humanness and it highlights that all of us humans are made in the likeness of the Creator of the universe.

But Halloween… dark spooky mysterious Halloween. As Christmas uplifts us, Halloween grounds us. The essence of Halloween is the unknown, is death, is nighttime and shadows and all that lurks around corners you cannot see. Halloween reminds us, “Hey. You are made in the image of God. It’s true. But don’t get too big for your britches. Don’t go manifesting and naming and claiming and spouting heresy about ‘being God’ because God is ‘in you.’ Look at yourself. You are very human. You trip in the dark. You’re scared of spiders. Your life is finite and you have absolutely no idea how or when it will end.”

So personally, I’d like to put an end to this Christmas vs. Halloween war that’s so prevalent in Christian and non-Christian circles. Let’s get over ourselves with the trunk-or-treats in church parking lots and just let the kids have fun dressing up as Darth Vader and eating six king size Snicker bars from the cool neighbor’s house.

Frankly, I’ve been happy to see in my lifetime, Halloween move from a holiday about skulls and demons and who can wear the creepiest clown costume, to one where people basically just cosplay as their favorite tv characters. I’m a big fan of that. I consider that a big cultural win, and if the church could re-embrace Halloween, we could find much needed comedic relief to the constantly high stakes of life on mission for the sake of saving the lost from the pits of Hell.

Not saying that that’s not important, but maybe once a year, we would do well to dress up as some Jim Carrey character, grab an adult beverage and a spiderweb cookie, and just say, “Ya know what? I ain’t perfect. I try to drink all the water in a glass of ice water only to have the ice attack my face and spill down my torso. And simultaneously, I’ve got the Holy Ghost living inside me. That is wacky and wonderful and wildly human, and I just wanna take this moment in my Ace Ventura costume to raise a glass to all these hallowed saints and sinners around me and the God who made us all and say, Happy Halloween.”

So as you sit on the couch, watching March Madness and finishing off a bag of Easter Reese’s Eggs, perhaps consider your fundamental state—your Halloween state, your human state, your past, everything you’ve ever done, said, thought, and felt right up until that last chocolate bite you just took. That memorable marvelous mess is you, buddy. Like it or not, that’s you at ground level.

Now consider Christmas. Consider God forming you and all that you are as carefully and intentionally as he formed the fetus body of His one and only Son in the womb of a teenage girl named Mary.

You are both of those. You are fearfully and wonderfully made, and a dog returning to his own vomit. You are capable of countless possibilities, wild power for good or for evil—bold declarations and goofy fashion faux pas.

It’s not that your past doesn’t matter. It does. And so does your future. And your present. There’s actually no real comfort in apathy. There’s no peace in nihilism. But there’s warm glowing electric life in the truth that everything matters immensely all the time. Your grades matter, your broken belt loop matters, your marriage matters, your good parking job matters, your crumpled paper trash can free throw shot matters, your grandparents matter, your socks matter, your education matters, your teeth matter, your love life matters, your dog matters, and your leftover chicken enchilada matters.

You matter. Your life matters—all of it.

So this Easter, I wish you a very very meaningful and profoundly happy HalloweenChristmas.