Halloween evokes divergent views in Islands
• The gnarly roots of Halloween reach back to Irish bog pranks
By Mary Kaye Ritz
Advertiser Religion & Ethics Writer
One particular small-kid-time Halloween sticks in Michele Umaki's mind.
"At one house, a lady dressed up as a witch, the candy bowl on her lap," she recalls. "You had to reach into her lap for the candy."
Today, decades later, she still shudders: "That scared me."
You won't find Umaki on her doorstep dressed in a witch costume Thursday night. She'll be at her church — and she won't be calling it "Halloween," either. At the First Assembly of God on Red Hill, Oct. 31 is Hallelujah Night.
A growing cultural divide over Halloween is making its way across the Islands and the nation. Here as elsewhere, what started as a widespread concern about safety has grown into an effort by some religious groups to take back the night from the dark side.
The Red Hill church has seen a fourfold increase in the number of people attending its celebration, from about 500 five years ago to about 2,000 last year.
And others are getting into the act, too, with at least 10 churches, mostly evangelical Christian, holding their own alternative-to-Halloween events.
Halloween originated as a celebration on the eve of All Hallows (Saints) Day. In the Roman Catholic calendar, All Saints Day is still a holy day of obligation, when Mass attendance is obligatory. Here in Hawai'i, however, the obligation has been released, and Mass hasn't been required on Nov. 1 in more than a decade.
"As culture, we've become less and less Christian," said Umaki's pastor, Ken Miller. "The competition is out there for the heart of our community. Halloween highlights the rift."
Robert Tokunaga, the assistant pastor of community outreach at the Red Hill church, said he organized Hallelujah Night because "the secular world is taking Halloween from simple trick-or-treating, and digressing into heavier (things like) witchcraft."
"The Bible teaches us not to dabble in witchcraft," he said. "We are easily controlled by spirits. Opening your mind to these things can influence how you act. We see it manifesting itself in society today, through violence in schools, people killing in the name of God."
Like Umaki, Tokunaga won't be home, either, but if he were, he'd hand out candy — as well as a Christian booklet.
Not all of Hawai'i's religious communities feel that way. The Rev. Vaughn Beckman, the senior pastor of First Christian Church, said he's not as superstitious as he used to be, which is why he allowed the American Friends Gay Liberation Group to use church grounds for their House of Homophobic Horrors, an adults-only haunted house complete with drag queens, a leather den, "all kinds of interesting stuff," he said.
It's too easy to assume the devil comes in readily recognizable form, he said.
"How many (so-called) evil influences are blinding people from the truth?" Beckman said. "It's not quite as black and white as being suggested."
Even those who celebrate Halloween — not All Saints Day — as a holy day, such as the Wiccans, don't consider the eve's darker side to be devil worship.
Beckman says his Wiccan acquaintances aren't worshipping the devil: "Some Christian groups are throwing that upon them. They're responsible citizens, taking care of their way of being in a proper manner."
The Rev. Michael Bowles, a high priest of the Wiccan order, estimates that about 75 to 100 people in Honolulu follow Wicca.
The celebration of Samhain (pronounced SO-hayn), a pre-Christian Celtic observance, is held at sunset on Oct. 31, when "the invisible veil that separates the mortal world from the spirit world was at its thinnest," according to Gerina Dunwich, founder of Bast-Wicca (a Wiccan sect) and author of "A Witch's Guide to Ghosts and the Supernatural."
It's a day of magic, yes, but "death is not an dark thing, not an evil thing," Bowles said. "It's a doorway, to be stepped through."
Bowles, a former altar boy who was raised Roman Catholic, contends that the early Christians linked their holy days to pagan celebrations, not the other way around, "so the people wouldn't go to the pagan celebration."
But Kevin Orlin Johnson, the Dallas-based author of the forthcoming "Why is This a Holiday? A Guide to American Celebrations of God and Country," a 1,200-page tome to be published in 2004, said he would like to see documentation that pagans owned Halloween.
"The tradition of Halloween is just a big Harvest Home festival with harmless games and good fun, celebrating the bounty of the harvest," the Roman Catholic author said, adding that Harvest Home was the celebration at the end of the agricultural work year.
"The actual date of Harvest Home varied a lot, because of the shifts in the climate, but whenever it happened to fall, people scheduled the celebration of the harvest just before a major feast day — as early as the Feast of Michael, on Sept. 29, and as late as the Eve of All Saints a month later," Johnson noted. "Some date when they all gather at the church anyway."
These days at St. Joseph, a Roman Catholic kindergarten and grade school in Waipahu, they're returning to their roots, dressing up as saints. Early Christians shared treats and asked for soul cake in return for prayers.
All the fuss is foreign to the Rev. Edgar Brillantes of St. John Church in Kalihi, where the bulk of his Roman Catholic parishioners are first- and second-generation immigrants. He grew up in the Philippines, where people celebrated All Hallows with costumes but didn't trick-or-treat.
"I love to see children wearing costumes, making parades, knocking on (the) door," he said. "It's just for kids' fun, enjoyment. I don't see any religious significance. I don't think children have that in mind when they wear these costumes."
And the fuss doesn't faze Buddhists, either, who are perfectly comfortable with the idea of ghosts. The traditional o-bon season is a time when ghosts walk among the living, and food is set out to feed them, so they don't become "hungry ghosts."
When Halloween dawns at Hongwanji Mission School, principal Lois Yasui will be dressed as SpongeBob SquarePants, handing out candy with the best of them.
"In Buddhism, we recognize we have a dark side; (it's) part of our whole persona," she said. "... If there are ghosts, I don't think they're necessarily evil. ... Buddhists don't think of ghosts as something to be afraid of."
Nor do they emphasize evil at Halloween or think of it as devil worship.
"It's more a time when we can have fun," she said, adding that she expects more students to be wearing Thomas the Train costumes than Freddy Krueger.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
• • •
The gnarly roots of Halloween reach back to Irish bog pranks
Halloween. Where did it come from? Blame the Gaelic sense of humor, says Kevin Orlin Johnson, author of the forthcoming "Why is This a Holiday? A Guide to American Celebrations of God and Country."
The jack-o'-lantern: In Europe, a jack was the term for an unskilled servant. The village jack-o'-lantern set out the torch for visitors coming at night, and he'd walk through the streets, calling out that all was well. By the 17th century, people were using the term to mean any bobbing light. It became the term for a prank when people would use candles set into hollowed-out turnips to lead people into bogs.
"That was high humor in those days," Johnson said.
When Irish settlers came to the United States, a pumpkin was easier to find than a turnip, and thus began the custom of putting out carved pumpkins to let people know they're welcomed to the party or to the house for trick-or-treating.
Trick-or-treating: Since All Hallows (Saints) Day is Nov. 1, the eve coincided with celebrations of the harvest. Apples and nuts were gathered, and people would go door to door, handing out the treats.
Witches, ghosts, spook tales: Much of the darker stuff was added later, after the 1950s, contends Johnson. That's when Halloween in its current form took hold. (The time of harvest, however, did coincide with butchering season, when animals that weren't being kept for spring foal season were dressed for the winter, so death was in the air.)
Dressing up: During the harvest celebrations, people would dress in fancy costumes for parties, bob for apples and play games.
"It was all good, innocent fun," he said. "Anything disagreeable or ugly was added not all that long ago."
