🎃 Once A Year Is Biblical 🎄

 My brother-in-law was over last night. We’re both in our 70’s, so we fell to talking about “the way things were,” as old people are wont to do. He argued that there were once rules, and being ex-Green Beret, he used the military as his example. In the military, he said, the same rules apply to everyone. I didn’t point out that, under the UCMJ, the general gets much more deference than the private; and today, especially, the SOD (which the military is properly under, the SOD being a civilian) , the rules have been tossed in a shredder as Hegseth fires general officers right and left. It’s a hegemonic move not unlike the white, male privilege he and I grew up under. Although we learned that hegemony as harmony, and Hegseth wields it to hide how weakness; much like the man who appointed him. My brother-in-law is an interesting (and not unusual) mix of conservative political values, and yet fully aware of the injustices done by white hegemony and economic power. Aware of it, and concerned by it. So this wasn’t an argument with a drunk uncle at Thanksgiving. It wasn’t an argument at all. He acknowledged his contradictions, even as he didn’t see any way to resolve them. I sympathize. It took seminary and years of work to change myself enough to eliminate some of the contra. Even then, it was my adult daughter who pointed out she walked through a world of dangers (from sexual harassment to threats of assault) that I simply didn’t live in. There is always another perspective than that of the straight, white, middle class m heterosexual male. And it’s hard to realize that perspective shouldn’t be normative.

We even talked about Hallowe’en in our youth. But we didn’t think about this:

Maybe it’s the corn syrup talking, but to me, Halloween will always be the quintessential American holiday. The Fourth of July and Thanksgiving don’t come close. Plenty of countries, dictatorships included, commemorate their nation’s founding and designate evenings to spend with relatives. Halloween is a night when kids visit strangers, people with no blood ties and no debt to their family, and receive gifts with no obligation in return. It is an exercise in civic trust, a belief in one’s neighbors regardless of religion, creed or political party. It’s a cheesy, cheery, schmaltzy, “Brady Bunch” optimism. My family and countless others have crossed oceans for it.

That’s the perspective of a young boy, a Russian immigrant, on his first Hallowe’en. So, add to my categories above, “American.” It never occurred to me that Hallowe’en was an act of civic trust. I know there’s “trunk or treat” parties, now, and the distinctly suburban neighborhoods of my childhood are not common even here in Houston. My street is a passageway. The street I grew up on was traveled only by neighbors. For three years after we moved here, we lived in a parsonage next to the church, on a busy four lane road. The nearest neighborhoods were miles down the road. We drove my daughter to friends’ neighborhoods. We certainly couldn’t let her walk out the front door, as I did when I was her age. Today there are barely any children in the neighborhood. We don’t buy candy, because no one comes to take it. But if they started up again, if children moved to the neighborhood, we’d open the door to them, without hesitation.  “Trick or treat!”

It occurs to me that the two great civic occasions in America are founded on Xian holidays (holy days), but they are both exercises in civic trust. Xmas may be uncomfortable, even oppressive, to non-Xians, but the secular observance has nothing to do with Xianity. Maybe the Xmas tree is the ancestor of the Paradeisbaum from German passion plays, but who is really aware of that? Is Santa Claus really St. Nicholas, or just a jolly old elf in a red coat? Separated entirely from Epiphany, gifts on Xmas morning are practically a private, civic duty. The culture tells us to never disabuse children of the “truth” about Santa, and even if we never fully live up to it, once a year it’s another civic creed that it is better to give than to receive. If any of this is oppressive to non-Xians, it isn’t meant to be. The season is so secular everyone is invited to join, and almost nobody wants to go to church when Xmas is on a Sunday (except the Catholics, who started it. The religious descendants of the Puritans who banned Christmas now, more often than not, close church that one Sunday every seven years or so.) Thanksgiving is purely secular, but private (Christmas morning is, too). July 4th, especially in these times, could easily be jingoistic and mean, when “patriotism” is confined to “true patriots,” which may not include you. But Xmas? That’s the season (a whole month!) when we’re supposed to open our hearts and welcome the stranger and feed the hungry and clothe the naked. And all because we are supposed to be generous and caring, if not 12 months a year, then at least for part of one.

Hallowe’en is not as big as that;  but maybe that makes it the gateway to Xmas; a smaller civic celebration that really is an act of civic trust, to get us ready to open our doors to friends (for parties), and, at least a little bit, to strangers, to whom we offer a bit more than candy. Every year I get appeals, starting in October, from charities pointing out that Xmas is coming. It’s the time of year we are expected, and expect, to give.

As the Russian immigrant said, reflecting on his childhood and his then confused grasp of English:

Triko-reet once a lifetime was very good. Triko-reet once a year was biblical.

Maybe Hallowe’en is a gateway to Xmas, a secular one. As Xmas is a secular gateway to New Year’s, in which we hope (but always fail) to carry that “Xmas spirit” into a brand new year.

There are worse ways to think about civic duty and civic trust, and civic holidays.