How Halloween Got Ruined

In  October 1994 my daughters were 3 (about to turn 4 in December) and 16 months old.  I worked at a childcare center in Traveler's Rest and took them with me every day.  They took up all the space in my heart and mind and life.  I remember thinking that everything I did was in some way, for them or about them or because of them.  There's nothing quite like those years of your youth, when you find complete satisfaction in all that Mom entails. 

I never minded waking up in the middle of the night.  I enjoyed spending mornings playing with my baby, and watching Hannah come up with new and fascinating imaginary friends complete with the most fantastical stories ever told by an almost 4 year old.  Watching them grow became my greatest joy in life.  I could not imagine my world without them.

Members, at that time, of a Fundamentalist Baptist church, Halloween around the corner, my mind and emotions were fraught with anxiety about right and wrong.  Our pastor and his wife sternly denounced all things Halloween.  Their vehement protest to trick-or-treating left me wondering if something I enjoyed so much as a child could really be as evil as they portrayed it.  My childhood memories, even as a child raised in a Fundamentalist family, conjured happy images of Halloweens, tromping through our neighborhood passing other kids on sidewalks dressed in Star Wars costumes, Wonder Woman costumes, and your standard Hobos and Ghosts of course, whose parents didn't think of Halloween until the last minute.  Some houses in the neighborhood went out of their way to make creepy box tunnels for us to crawl through to find candy at the end.  One house always had a guy in a coffin who jumped up at you when you walked past.  Warm October or chilly October, we set out on foot, going house to house until our buckets filled to the brim.  We never imagined we were taking part in some Satanic ritual that glorified Satan and blasphemed God.  We did trick-or-treat, then went to church the next Sunday and told our church friends about our costumes.  Halloween for us, was nothing more than an innocent time of childhood fun.  I can't remember anything quite like the thrill of putting on that plastic mask that smelled all weird and had tiny nose holes to breath out of.  The year I was Wonder Woman stands out in my mind as one of the best Halloweens ever!  

I recall though, that in 1994, a kind of pall fell over everything locally.  Two little boys--kidnapped in a carjacking in Union SC were headlining the daily news everywhere.  All across the state people drove a little slower, watching out for a maroon colored Mazda that apparently was stolen with two little boys inside, roughly the same ages as my two girls.  For weeks we watched Susan Smith on our screens, fake crying and pleading with no one really, to bring her boys home.  We all wanted to believe her story, but deep down everyone felt a sinking sense of despair that Susan might be hiding something.  

At church one Wednesday night during the height of this incident, my pastor's wife and I sat off to the side together after service.  She went on and on about the people at her job, her relatives even, who seemed so caught up in the spirit of Halloween.  It bothered her, she confided, that these people would involve their children in such wickedness.  The conversation moved to the Smith boys' disappearance and the speculation that something horrible happened to them.  I'm not sure if Susan Smith was suspected yet at this point, but what my pastor's wife said to me that night stuck with me and I think of it nearly every Halloween.

"The way everybody is getting so carried away with Halloween, it makes me kind of wish some Satan worshiper took those kids and has done something horrible to them.  I want these people celebrating Halloween to get the message that they are dabbling in things that are evil.  I know it sounds horrible of me to say that, but I just really wish something bad happened to them related to Halloween so people will stop all this Halloween stuff!"

Dumbfounded, I don't recall how I responded.  I probably kind of shook my head and didn't verbally respond at all.  What do you say to something like that?

A few days later in the evening as I prepared to leave work, the parent of one of my preschoolers came in to pick up her son.  She looked sad--tired.  I asked if she was okay. 

"Yeah," she said with a sigh. "I just heard about those poor babies."

Having been at work all afternoon, I didn't know the latest news.

"What happened to them?" I asked, with a lump in my throat.

"She did away with them." The other mom said.  "She drove them into the lake and drowned them."

My heart sunk.  I wanted to run down those stairs and find my two babies and hold them tight.  On the way home I thought about how horrified those children had to be when they saw their mommy jump out of a moving car and allow them to plunge, still strapped into their car seats, into a cold lake.  I couldn't stop myself from imagining their horror as the car filled with water, as it covered their little faces, them struggling to breath, to escape their fate.  What betrayal and abandonment must have filled their poor little fearful hearts in those final moments.

I thought briefly that my pastor's wife had gotten her wish.  Then I remembered that the decision Susan Smith made had nothing to do with Halloween, nothing to do with Satanism, nothing to do with denouncing Christianity.  In fact, Susan claimed to be a Christian.  I bet if her boys had lived another 5 days, they would have been door to door in adorable costumes, trick-or-treating for their favorite treats.  Instead, because their mother wanted a man more than she wanted them, they were a casualty of her agenda to get the man she wanted.

When we arrived home I held my girls, played with them, even cried at the thought of something happening to them.  I couldn't grasp the pure selfishness and lack of parental love that would lead a mother to do such a thing; but I knew Halloween didn't cause it.

My girls never went trick or treating until after I divorced their father.  Before then we went to "fall festivals" at church where the dressed up in costumes, went on hayrides and got candy.  Often, they also got a huge dose of "why Halloween is evil" and a walk through the Gospel instead.  No ghosts, goblins, witches or other scary spooks allowed.  Nothing scary or "demonic" could be brought into these Church festivals.  They were fun, in their own way, but the first year after the divorce all I wanted to do was take my girls to experience the joy of Trick-or Treat!  We went to a local neighborhood and spent about an hour going house to house.  They LOVED it!  They couldn't understand why, all those years, their dad and I never let them do it.

The only answer I could give was fear.  Fear of doing something wrong, fear of being judged by our pastor or other church members, fear that something horrible might be wished upon us by some other Christian because we took part in Halloween festivities and didn't refer to them as "fall festivals."

Things changed drastically in the Fundamentalist churches around upstate SC during the 80's and 90's.  Things that or church thought nothing of when I was a small child became enormously egregious sins.  Going to the movies--huge sin.  Wearing pants if you were a woman--inexcusable sin.  Swimming with your brother while wearing a swimsuit--bordering on falling into sexual sin and possibly teetering on the edge of Hell itself.  Halloween though, became a menacing threat to all Christians held dear.  It was the antithesis of Christmas, Satan's day to be glorified and exalted, and we, as Christians, were committing sins of defiant disregard for what God wanted us to do on Halloween.

Every year at this time I remember my pastor's wife's comment about Susan Smith's children.  I wonder if she ever felt bad about saying that sometimes, then I realize, she wouldn't feel bad about that because she believed it would serve a higher purpose: To stop all those awful human beings from subjecting their children to costumes and Candy in the name of Satan.  In her mind, those two boys' deaths served a purpose to teach parents not to    succumb to society's pressure to celebrate Halloween.

After I got out of the Fundamentalist bubble, my world began to open up to me in ways I never dreamed.  Halloween became one of my family's favorite nights of the year, shuffling through our neighborhood checking out all the other kids' costumes, getting candy from neighbors, and then crashing back at home by 8:00 to dump all our candy out on the floor and see what treats we'd found.  Once in a while after we were home, we got to meet and greet and give candy to other kids too.  

Late at night, I tucked them into bed, the excitement over Halloween still in their voices as I left the room to let them drift off to sleep.

Religious or not, every kid deserves a chance to bask in the pure innocence that is Halloween for most every one.  

And as for those self-righteous judges who harbor ill wishes in their hearts towards children of parents who don't deprive them of fun, amazing memory building childhood experiences; I hope they feel the full weight of their ill wishes on others.  I hope they come to understand that their wishing aloud even, for something horrible to have happened to those little Smith boys, made them much more evil than any parent who dresses up their kddo as a cowboy and sends him knocking on doors asking strangers to fill his hat with chocolate.  

The darkness of Smith's deed hangs over me every Halloween.  I think of her boys, now they' be in college, perhaps married and/or with children of their own.  She took that away from them, not because of a holiday, but because her short-term goals in life were more important to her than the lives of her children. 

We do a disservice to ourselves, our families and our friends when we assume that things like Halloween are what invite evil into our worlds.  We invite it daily, when people put on their proverbial disguises as they leave home.  We invite it daily when we don't speak up for someone who is being mistreated. 

We keep quiet about all the real evil that happens where Halloween is not a factor.  We find excuses to believe that the welts on a girls legs are from a "spanking" rather than physical abuse.  We find ourselves defending all things labeled "christian" whether or not they actually hold true to Christianity.  And children drowned in the back seat of cars?  A lesson to everyone who doesn't shun Halloween as a Satanic ritual designed to steal the very souls of our kids.

This was Fundamentalist life for me.  A life filled with worry and anxiety over seeing, hearing or doing something sinful.  I had a life that made me miss out on some of the most fun, innocent, joyful times of my girl's lives. 

 Every year since I left my husband, Halloween has been one of our favorite family times together.  So far no one has gotten a poisoned apple or bitten into razor blade candy.

I'm grateful I made my escape from Fundamentalism and all the life-experiences it denied me and my kids.  This is my life now, and I know God is with me even as I take my kid from house to house, dressed as an Empty Child from Dr. Who and my granddaughter charms candy givers with her sweet "Trick or Traeeaat!" We are building something special here, and in the end, Satan will not have any power over me because of it.

Halloween got ruined for much of my girls' childhoods, because of Fundamentalist insistence that we could not be truly Christian and participate in Halloween.  I'm here to tell you now, it's not true.

Now...to find that candy bucket...