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You maybe thought it was over. The candy's been counted and sorted, the costumes hung in the back closet with care, and your pumpkin survived the night unscathed. Another Halloween's come and gone.
So why another Halloween reflection, this November 1st morning (as if a post connecting trick-or-treating to the atonement hadn't gone far enough)?
Well: because the Christian connection in Halloween-- if there is a genuine Christian connection-- has to do with the Feast of All Saints, which is celebrated on November 1st. As far as the Christian calendar is concerned, all is hallowed on Hallowe'en only because it's the night before All Saint's Day, that day of the year the Church sets aside to remember the Saints who have gone before (and to celebrate the things the Holy Spirit has accomplished through the faithful men and women of the past.)
Discussions of "whether or not Christians should participate in Halloween" almost never mention All Saints Day; and even among the most enthusiastic Christian supporters of Halloween festivities, I've never heard anyone follow up the question "What are you being for Halloween?" with "What are you doing for All Saints Day?"
Which is a shame. Because celebrating Hallowe'en without celebrating All Saints Day is a bit like celebrating Christmas Eve without celebrating Christmas Morning. Kind of anti-climactic. But it's also a shame, because telling the Church's story through the lives of her saints is a powerful way to share the gospel (just try explaining why a Free Methodist is called a Free Methodist to someone who doesn't know Jesus; you'll see). And it seems to me that, inasmuch as secular society still enjoys a good All's Hallowed Eve romp, the Christian Feast Day that it's leading up to is a great time to talk about Jesus.
So, in the interest of shining some light on this most over-shadowed feast day of the year, I offer you here a little "All Saint's Day Quiz."
How many of the following saints can you name (leave your answers in the "comments" below-- first 5 respondents get an advance copy of my upcoming new CD!)
1. This theologian's "coming clean" about a stolen pear left an indelible mark on the church's understanding of original sin.
2. The hero of Leonard Cohen's Beautiful Losers asked for this Mohawk believer to be sainted years before the Catholic Church got around to doing it.
3. The fanciful tales of this Irish monk's journey into the Atlantic have led scholars to speculate that Irish sailors knew about the New World long before Columbus got there.
4. This medieval theologian was nicknamed "the ox". In trying to mesh the Bible with Aristotle's philosophy, he ended up setting a course for theology that wouldn't be challenged until the Reformation.
5. This father of the Early Church was nicknamed Adamantius-- the Man of Steel-- because of his firm commitment to the Faith; some scholars suggest that this name comes especially from the fact that he took Matthew 19:12 as literally as possible.
6. Legend has it that this Roman priest was martyred for performing illegal marriages for Christian soldiers.
7. This Christian writer has been called "The Evangelical Patron Saint of the Imagination"; the hero of his most popular novel is named after the Turkish word for lion.
8. Speaking of lions, this early biographer of Jesus is thought to have been a disciple of St. Peter; his symbol is a winged lion.
9. According to legend, this monk from Asia Minor was killed in the Roman Coliseum trying to stop a gladiator fight; his martyrdom prompted the Emperor to discontinue the Games altogether.
10. This Christian was never sainted by the Catholic Church, but when he nailed some paper to a church door on Halloween Night, 1517, he changed the course of history.
The Halloween Files (Part IX): An All Saints Day Quiz for the Morning After
The Halloween Files (Part VIII): On Trick-or-Treating
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As regular readers of this blog will know, the last few weeks at terra incognita have been devoted to theologically decoding the themes of Halloween. Halloween came on faster than I could write, so there are a few "Halloween Files" that will have to wait until next year, but one of the big issues we didn't tackle in this series is the supposed pagan origins of the festival. As it turns out, the "Is Halloween pagan?" question is more complicated than a 500-word blog post could adequately cover anyway. For those who want some further reading to help them settle the issue, let me recommend the following.
Here's an article about Halloween's Christian (yes, Christian) connections.
And here's my old friend Richard Beck with a psychological defense of Halloween (again I need to credit Beck with having inspired this series here at terra incognita).
And here's Steve Bell on "keeping Christ in Halloween."
I'll keep the jury sequestered on this one and let you make up your own mind. But since your door will be ringing with cries for treats and threats of tricks in only a few hours, let me try to decode one last Halloween tradition here: the "trick-or-treater."
Because when you strip away the pillow-cases full of candy, the symbolic narrative of trick-or-treating is as potent as it is old: a spirit-being (who may in fact be a neighbour in disguise, but there's no way of knowing for certain) comes to your door begging hospitality and threatening mischief if it's withheld. That is, after all, what's echoing (albeit faintly) under that mask-muffled cry: Show hospitality (treat), or suffer the consequences (trick).
As a symbolic narrative, this story is old enough to be archetypal: a spirit-being-in-disguise came calling for hospitality, and finding none, exacted reprisal. Just read the prologue to Beauty and the Beast, or the myth of Baucis and Philemon (in Ovid's Metamorphosis), or the story of Abraham and the destruction of Sodom (in Genesis 18-19).
What these stories all point out is that, in the ancient world at least, there was a spiritual dimension to hospitality. It's why Abraham was so quick to welcome his guests under the Oaks of Mamre (Genesis 18), and why Lot's house, alone, was spared when the Lord went looking for ten righteous men in Sodom (Genesis 19). Because graciously and generously welcoming the stranger was once a moral act, and poor hospitality was once a deep spiritual failing.
Trick-or-treating may or may not have descended from old Celtic rituals designed to appease the spirit-beings on the night when the veil between "their world" and "ours" was at its thinnest. The jury's still out. But where ever it came from, it is a vestige from a time gone by when we recognized hospitality as a profoundly spiritual act. As such, it serves as a playful reminder to our world, where we have (for all intents and purposes) closed our minds to the possibility of spirit-beings, and are increasingly closing our doors to strangers: there is something spiritual going on when we practice genuine hospitality.
And if you're still with me, then let me point you in two equal and opposite directions for reflection this Halloween night.
On the one hand, notice that the "symbolic logic" of trick-or-treating is based on the threat of retribution and the hope of appeasement: appease the spirit world or suffer its vengeance. In this, its "inner symbolism" is decidedly pagan, whether it came from ancient Ireland or not. It's based on the idea that "the gods" (or in this case, their cleverly-costumed representatives) threaten terrible tricks unless they are dully treated. And in pointing that out, I hope you'll understand what I mean when I say that through the Cross, Jesus has actually unmasked the "trick-or-treating god" for us. In biblical language: the divine wrath is satisfied, once for all in Jesus, who is the atoning sacrifice for our sins.
And if that seems like a bit of a theological leap (from trick-or-treating to the atonement), then let me give you the other hand. Hospitality is still a spiritual act. As a Christian and a pastor, I believe that the church is called to extend God's hospitality to the stranger and the outsider in our midst. In material and spiritual ways, we're called to share with others the hospitality that we've experienced in Jesus Christ, when God invited us to his table, spiritually homeless sinners though we were.
And if you'll listen for it, you may hear that call echoing in the background tonight, when those masked gremlins and other assorted strangers stand outside your door, crying out for a treat. If you'll listen for it, you may hear God say what he said in Hebrews 13:2, all over again: "Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it."
Happy Halloween, everybody!
The Halloween Files (Part VII): A Theological Bestiary
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As part of my ongoing reflections on Halloween, I had intended to write a theological bestiary--that is, a study of the various monsters that turn up at Halloween--werewolves, vampires, phantoms and the like--with a detailed discussion of their theological significance as projections of our deepest fears and repulsions. But Halloween's only two sleeps away and I've got to get working on my costume: who's got the time?
And besides, psychologist/theologian Richard Beck has already done a fascinating and thorough job of this over at his blog, Experimental Theology. It was actually discovering his work on the theology of monsters a year or so ago that inspired this Halloween series; so, as a tribute, and to avoid re-inventing the wheel I thought I'd post a link instead.
Start here: Omens & Warnings. And whatever else you do, don't miss this one: Monsters and Heroes; but do it when you've got the time for some leisurely, reflective reading. I shared some of Beck's ideas at the dinner table with the kids a few weeks ago. My son's assessment: "Mind equals blown."
There is so much that is rich and thought provoking in this series, but what I would like to draw attention to here is Richard Beck's over-arching theory that monsters are a social defense mechanism--a form of "othering" by which we culturally "deal with" our own junk. In Beck's words:
The theological richness of monsters comes from the fact that monsters allow us to reflect upon notions of otherness, alienness, strangeness, and alterity. More specifically, monsters ask us to confront and analyze our fears of the Other to determine if those fears are misdirected.
To review, many of things feared in monsters are aspects of the self. As Richard Kearney writes in his book Strangers, Gods and Monsters: Ideas of Otherness monsters remind us that the "ego is never wholly sovereign...Each monster narrative recalls that the self is never secure in itself." Monsters are "tokens of fracture within the human psyche."
Feeling this fracture, we've noted how we project the transgressive aspects of the self onto the Other. Kearney writes that "we often project onto others those unconscious fears from which we recoil in ourselves." We handle our own evil by attempting "to repudiate it by projecting it exclusively onto outsiders." This creates "the polarization between Us and Them" resulting in the Monster/Hero duality we discussed in a prior post, a duality where I am Good and the Other is Bad. Kearney summarizes, "all too often, humans have [allowed] paranoid delusions to serve the purpose of making sense of our confused emotions by externalizing them into black-and-white scenarios."
I'll leave you with that little piece of Halloween toffee to chew on for today; but let me add this: Richard Beck suggests that monster narratives are a way of dealing with the collective discomfort we feel about "the other" in our midst. "They" disturb "us" because in their difference they point out our own brokenness-- the evil within, so to speak. So we make "them" unclean, outcast, untouchable, and by this act of demonization we try to convince ourselves that we are, in fact, whole.
If he's right, then I guess it wouldn't hurt to remember that in his ministry among the poor, the outcast, the unclean, the demonized, Jesus stood with the monsters.
And if he's right, it would mean that this Halloween night, when the doorbell rings and the neighbour kid stands there in his rubber devil mask asking for a treat, that's actually opportunity knocking. It's an opportunity to be reminded that "the monster," in fact, is us.
The Halloween Files (Part VI): Feasting (with egg on your face) in the Upside-Down Kingdom
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Admittedly, I was not thinking about the theology of the Halloween prank, that cold November first morning a few years back, when I stood shivering in my PJs, scouring egg yolk from the windshield of my car. But I am thinking about it this morning, working my way through a theological analysis of the themes of Halloween and all; because anyone who’s ever cleaned smashed pumpkin guts from their porch the morning after can tell you that “the prank” is a significant, if inconvenient part of the festivities on Alls-Hallowed Eve.
In this it shares good company with a number of chaotic festivals from the Human Family’s Book of Memories. The Saturnalia of ancient Rome, for instance, was marked by role-reversals (slaves and children become the lords and masters for a day), role-playing (which probably included disguises and costumes), and licentiousness on a scale that would make the most seasoned Halloween prankster blush through his mask.
A kissing-cousin of the Saturnalia is the old, nearly forgotten tradition from Medieval Christendom known as “The Feast of Fools.” Here’s how theologian Harvey Cox describes this strange festival:
During the medieval era there flourished in parts of Europe a holiday known as the Feast of Fools. On that colorful occasion, usually celebrated about January first, even ordinarily pious priests and serious townsfolk donned bawdy masks, sang outrageous ditties and generally kept the whole world awake with revelry and satire. Minor clerics painted their faces, strutted about in the robes of their superiors, and mocked the stately rituals of church and court. Sometimes a Lord of Misrule, a Mock King, or a Boy Bishop was elected to preside over the events.Festivals like the Feast of Fools, while inconvenient and somewhat unsettling, played an important role in the cultural psyche of times gone by. As Harvey Cox suggests: “The Feast of Fools ... demonstrated that [we could] imagine, at least once in a while, a wholly different kind of world—one where the last was first, accepted values were inverted, fools became kings and choirboys were prelates.”
The Feast of fools was never popular with the higher-ups. It was constantly condemned and criticized. But despite the efforts of fidgety ecclesiastics and an outright condemnation by the Council of Basel in 1431, the Feast of Fools survived until the sixteenth century. ... In the age of the Reformation it gradually died out ... [but] its faint shade still persists in the pranks and revelry of Halloween and New Years Eve (emphasis mine).
Did you connect the dots there, too? The “shade” of our age-old desire to imagine “a wholly different kind of world,” where “accepted values are inverted” persists “in the pranks and revelry of Halloween."
And suddenly I’m thinking of the Kingdom of God.
To be clear: I am not suggesting that hurling an egg at an unsuspecting domicile on Halloween Night is a legitimate expression of the Christian Faith. I’m not saying that at all. What I am saying is that perhaps all the chaos of Halloween—the treats and the tricks—perhaps that’s really an expression of our deep down desire to imagine a world where the power-structures-that-be get turned on their head.
And I’m saying that this desire has a long pedigree in the Saturnalian Chaos of which the Halloween Prank is just a faint echo.
And I’m saying that the Kingdom of Heaven is actually God’s answer to this age-old desire for a radical inversion of the Status Quo. After all, didn’t Jesus himself say it: in his Kingdom the first do come last; the greatest are the least; and the ones who weep are blessed as the Master becomes the Servant of All.
In Donald Kraybill’s words, the Kingdom of God is an Upside-down Kingdom. Though it’s often neglected in the wealthy, complacent, bourgeois Christianity of the West, this is one of the central themes in its proclamation: God’s Kingdom turns the value systems and the power structures of the World upside-down.
And if that really is a longing for the radical inversion of the status-quo that I see, lurking there the bottom of the traditional Halloween Prank, then I suppose we have the glorious fulfillment of every Halloween Prank ever played in this message: “The time has been fulfilled and the Kingdom of God is at hand, repent and believe the good news.”
The Halloween Files (Part V): Zombie Apocalypses, Then and Now
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The video for Michael Jackson's Thriller came out when I was in Grade 4. I know this with certainty because I can remember quite clearly my Grade 4 Halloween party at school. As part of the festivities, our Grade 4 teacher thought it would be a fun idea to watch this new music video that was all the rage, by a rising star named Michael Jackson.
For those who forget (or never saw) the thrilling Zombie-dance, you can check it out here. Thirty years later, Thriller still has that magical something-or-other about it, despite the light years of sophistication that now stand between film-making-special-effects then and now. Michael Jackson's necromantic choreography may seem somewhat campy today, but I confess here that I came home from that Grade 4 Halloween party absolutely terrified. I lay awake that night, fully expecting an undead horde to burst through the floor of my bedroom as per the zombies that swarm Ola Ray at the 11 min. 11 sec. mark of the video.
I survived that night, of course, but in the continued spirit of confession, let me say that to this day, Michael Jackson's yellow werewolf eyes still send a thrill of terror through my chest.
But here's the thought I'm mulling over today, as I practice thinking theologically about Halloween this month and all. Released in 1983, Thriller opens with the following disclaimer from Michael Jackson himself (who was a practicing Jehovah's Witness at the time): Due to my strong personal convictions, I wish to stress that this film in no way endorses a belief in the occult.
Three decades later, I find this disclaimer very telling.
Because zombies are experiencing a bit of a renaissance these days, from what I understand. Witness, for instance, the success of The Walking Dead TV show, or the increasing popularity of "zombie walks," or the recent film Contagion, which some reviewers have called "the most believable zombie movie ever made." But what's curious about this resurgence of interest in the living dead is that, back in 1983 our collective imagination associated zombies with the occult, whereas now-a-days we associate them more with the fallout of some technological catastrophe or global pandemic. (This is, at least, how serious academic research on the prospects of a real Zombie apocalypse tackles the issue.)
The original zombie numbered among the "undead"; i.e. it was a re-animated corpse, raised up by some dark art or other: voodoo or necromancy or magic. The modern zombie numbers among the "walking dead," that is, a still-animated corpse, contagious with death because of some biological disaster or other, be it nuclear, bacterial or genetic.
And herein lies the terror of the modern zombie. Unlike vampires and werewolves, they are still conceivable to us, even in our scientifically scoured and technologically dis-enchanted world. In this regard, the shift in the zombie archetype-- from occult horror to biohazard-- reveals something theologically significant about the modern world. To the extent that the monsters we imagine are really just a projection of our deepest cultural fears, it's certainly suggestive that today's zombie is no longer a demonic horror but a monster of our own making. In a rationalistic world that has (for all intents and purposes) disavowed the reality of all things spiritual (good or evil), an occult terror like necromancy has lost its potency. But the possibility that the technological wonders we depend on so deeply may actually erupt into an apocalyptic horror that reduces civilization as we know it to a staggering corpse--that's a thought to keep grown men awake at night.
So what does the mythos of the modern zombie teach us? In short: once we feared the devil; today we fear ourselves.
Musical Mondays (VIII)
The Halloween Files (Part IV): The Shiny-Red Candy Apple of Community
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In case my last reflection on Halloween and the "Fear of the Numinous" was a bit too exotic for your palate, let me try some food for thought that's a bit more down to earth.
Bran-for-thought.
Or maybe a candy apple for thought, as the case may be. Because all mysteria tremendi aside, the other thing Halloween is about is good, old fashioned community. All the elements of a strong community are there: parents taking playful walks with their kids, neighbours coming to call, opening your door to strangers, the people on the block coming out in the open and doing something together for a change. Halloween's got it all.
And when you stop to think about it, of all the red-letter days of the year, it's the only one that emphasizes the broader community like this. Valentine's Day is about couples; Christmas is about the family (and increasingly, the nuclear family); Thanksgiving is about the extended family; Easter may or may not have the church thrown in. But only Halloween focuses on the community generally like this (November 11th may be the exception that proves the rule, but then Remembrance Day is more a civic than a communal thing).
Rubber devil masks notwithstanding, Halloween is about neighbours playing together as a community.
Or it once was.
Last week I saw my first ever "Get your Halloween shopping done early" ad. Everything you need to enjoy Halloween, it assured us, is available at Walmart. The latest Iron Man costume with real working lights, quality candy the kids will love that won't break your budget, kitchy plastic lawn-ghouls: Walmart's got it all.
Watching the ad, it struck me that nothing can be marketed without first wringing out its soul.
Not to wax nostalgic, but in my day, you made your own costume, or your parents did, and in making it you did something creative together; then you wandered the streets with other kids in hand-made costumes while parents visited on the curb; and there were still some homes that handed out real, home-made candy apples or popcorn balls (they were never as coveted as a chocolate bar, mind you, but those were so rare back then they tasted twice as good when you got one).
In WalMart's world, everything that once oriented Halloween towards the community--creativity and home-made goodness and imagination and hand-craft-i-ness and play-- all the things that can't be marketed and are beyond value--have been replaced. Instead, we have pressure to buy stuff; and beneath that, a deeper pressure to believe that personal identity is best expressed through a pointless purchase, and that expressing yourself in this way matters more than community, anyway.
A couple of years ago I read a fascinating book by Murray Jardine called The Making and Unmaking of Technological Society. Jardine traces the history of Western liberal capitalist democracy, and concludes that our current obsession with aesthetic self-expression through consumerism represents the great moral and existential crisis of our time.
If he's right (and I think he is) then it seems to me that hordes of bedsheet-shrouded phantoms wandering the streets at night aren't the scariest thing about Halloween. Scarier still are the polyester Spiderman (TM) costumes (Made in China) that have replaced them.
Amos on Apple, and other thoughts
I try to read the Old Testament in Hebrew, as best I can, a little bit each day. I find that reading Scripture in the original language draws me into the text in ways I’ve never seen it before. This is partly because I’m just going so darn slow that I have lots of time to mull over what I’m reading, but it’s also because sometimes you come across little gems of expression that modern translations gloss over, but really sparkle when you take the time to dig them out of the original.
Amos 1:9 was such a gem the other day. Amos is pronouncing God’s judgment on the nations, and in 1:9 he says, “For the three sins of Tyre, even for four, I will not turn back my wrath. Because she sold whole communities of captives to Edom, disregarding a treaty of brotherhood” (NIV).
What caught me in particular the other day was that last phrase: “disregarding a treaty of brotherhood.” In Hebrew it literally says something like: “they did not remember the covenant of brothers.”
Now, in OT theology, “covenant” is a vital aspect of both creation and salvation; God’s saving acts in history revolve around his making of and committing to covenant relationships, and covenant itself is the divine means by which God binds himself to his creation. And what’s more, in the Hebrew Scriptures, “remembrance” is a semi-technical term for keeping a covenant. So the language here is packed theologically tighter than the phrase “disregarding a treaty of brotherhood” suggests.
In selling their neighbors into captivity, Tyre has actually broken covenant and now faces divine wrath because of it.
And when I read it yesterday, my first thought was: I don’t remember there being a “brotherly covenant.” That is to say: most lists of the Old Testament covenants include the Noahic covenant, the Abrahamic covenant, the Mosaic, the Aaronic, the Davidic covenant and so on—but—what is this “brotherly covenant” of which you speak?
I don’t remember it.
And I think, maybe, that’s the point. My hunch is that the “brotherly covenant” here is a prophetic reference to the kinship of all humanity—the “sibling obligation” we all have as men and women made alike in God’s image, to be one another’s keeper. Amos is talking about the “brotherhood of man” (to use a borrowed and slightly dated term) that God established between us all when he made covenant with his whole creation in the beginning.
And remembering this covenant—remembering it in the technical sense of “keeping it,” but also in the general sense of “remembering that it does indeed exist”—is vital to our life with God. If Tyre had remembered (i.e. “recalled”) the brotherly covenant, they would have “remembered it” (i.e. lived by its terms). That is: if they had acknowledged that there exists between all human beings a sacred kinship that transcends nation, tribe or tongue, they never would have done something so repugnant to God as selling their “brothers” into slavery.
And as that gem sits there, scintillating prophetically on the page before me, I’m thinking of my own infidelities to the “covenant of brothers.” Because it’s easy to forget the covenant without even knowing you’ve broken it.
As one example (and I only offer this here as grist for the mill): the other day my son mentioned in passing he heard that if Apple didn’t use sweat-labor to make them, ipads would cost, like, $23,000 a piece. I’m not sure where he got that number itself, but this article suggests that he’s probably not too far off.
And this interview suggests that it’s not just the people of Tyre who forgot that we’re all in covenant together before YHWH.
The Halloween Files, Part III: Horror Movie Marathons and other Numinous Reflections
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I remember a Halloween night in my early teens, when my friends and I were too old to Trick-or-Treat anymore, but too young, yet, to give up on the festivities altogether, so we rented a movie-marathon's worth of B-grade horror flicks instead. I've never done scary movies that well, but that night was especially terrifying. After all my friends had gone home, I lay awake in bed, lights on and saucer-plates for eyes, while visions of zombie limbs danced through my head.
Which was kind of the point in the first place, of course. Fear is one of the central themes of Halloween; and whatever else is happening when hordes of ghoul-begarbed kids tramp around the block demanding treats at the threat of tricks-- whatever else that's all about-- it is an expression of our complicated relationship with that oldest of all human emotions: fear.
Freud might argue that this harmless-seeming tradition is really a sublimation of our deepest cultural fears. We are haunted by the suspicion that unseen "somethings" lurk beneath the surface--that something dreadful would happen to us if ever they did surface--that there really is more going on in heaven and earth than is dreamt of in our philosophy. This suspicion is very old and very dark, and still very real, even in our clean, well lit, modernized world. In fact, the cleanliness and good-lighting of the modern world actually exacerbates our fear, because we no longer have the old channels--myth and ritual and unexplored regions on the map--that we once used to hang it on. And because powerful emotions, bottled up, will find expression somehow, we still observe one day a year where these fears can be put on display. It's all in playful good fun, of course; but then, what is play, if not a distorting, funhouse mirror, held up to those things we take most seriously?
Might all this play at being scared on Halloween Night actually be a venue--one of the few venues left to us, in fact--for acting out the spiritual Fear that still haunts us?
My hunch is that it is; and this is why, as a Christian, Halloween fascinates me.
Because I think the hauntedness of the human condition is actually an important theme of the Christian Faith, too. As a Christian, I believe that what people are most afraid of, whether they know it or not, is God. He is the "unseen something"-- mysterious and terrifying--lurking beneath the surface with the threat of dreadful things if ever he were to come into full view.
The fancy word for this is "The Numinous," which is a theological way of talking about the fear evoked by the divine presence: the dread of the holy--the awful thought of the infinite--the crushing weight of glory. As Aldus Huxley puts it, "The literature of religious experience abounds in references to the pains and terrors overwhelming those who have come, too suddenly, face to face with some manifestation of the mysterium tremendum. In theological language, this fear is due to the in-compatibility between man's egotism and the divine purity, between man's self-aggravated separateness and the infinity of God."
This is where C. S. Lewis starts, incidentally, in his classic case for the existence of God in The Problem of Pain: not with reasoned philosophical syllogisms or scientific evidence that demands a verdict, but with the Numinous--the haunting fear that humans have always had, that there is something terrifyingly other, present and holy and at work in our day-to-day.
It's where God starts, too, incidentally.
Re-read how God makes his covenant with Abraham in Genesis 15 if you want to get a biblical glimpse of the Numinous. If you recall, Abraham butchers a heifer, a ram, a goat and two birds. He arranges them into two piles opposite each other, and keeps this surreal vigil, scattering the vultures whenever they get to close to the carcases. Then, the Bible says, "As the sun was setting a thick and dreadful darkness overcame him." And there, on the edge of dream at the threshold of reality, a numinous vision engulfs him: a smoking "something-or-other" passes between the bloody pieces of the sacrifice, and from the depths of that thick darkness, the dreadful voice of God himself speaks, binding himself on oath to Abraham, swearing to be his God forever.
Not for nothing did Jacob call God "The Fear of Isaac" (Gen 31:42). It's enough to keep a young man awake at night with lights on and saucers for eyes.
But this brings me back to Halloween and my hunch that it's a modern-day sublimation of our age-old fear of the Numinous. Because the conclusion of Abraham's story is Christ; and in Christ we find that our fear of the Numinous has been both affirmed and transformed. After all: when the Fear of the Lord turns us to the Cross of Christ, we discover there that atonement and purity and eternity now defines our life with God--that perfect love has indeed driven out fear--that anyone who fears the Lord in this way, has nothing, now, to fear.
That's good news.
And it may be that on Halloween, when the neighbourhood is collectively sublimating its Fear of the Numinous with candy apples and monster-masks--it may be the most wondrful time of the year to remind ourselves of this good news.